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[saltidctenid]

So, I'm trans. And several years ago, I was at my great grandfather's funeral. 17, newly on T, barely out to anyone other than my close friends and family. And I'm standing there at the refreshment's table, surrounded by strangers and members of my family's church, when George walks up to me.

This man is ancient, bent like a finger and frail. Tufts of white hair surround his wrinkled face. Like always, he's wearing thick glasses, massive hearing aids, and his veteran's hat. George was my first introduction to the concept of war, when he told me as a child why he was missing two fingers on his hand. He's been a fixture at church since I can remember. I've only ever seen him at there or in uniform at parades, the rest of his time spent in a nursing home somewhere. He picks up a deviled egg and says, in his quiet voice,

"You know, before your grandfather died, he told me that now he had 3 grandsons."

I'm frozen in place. I don't know what to say to that, if I should say anything at all. This is not a conversation I expected to have, especially not with this man. But he continues.

"I didn't know what he meant! So he explained it to me."

And I can imagine it. My great grandfather, uninformed and opinionated but supportive, explaining to his friend the news he barely understood himself over after-service coffee and cookies. His eldest grandchild was now a boy.

"And, you know, I didn't know what to think."

Here, George looks me up and down. This 90-something year old war veteran, who knew me mostly as the little girl playing in the church kitchen with his wife, processing what my great grandfather had really meant. It feels like a long pause, even thought it probably passed in a second.

"But you look good. So, eh!"

And then he smiled, shrugged, and walked away without another word. If I was fine, if I was happier, then that's all that mattered.

George passed away this week, at the age of 99. This memory has been bouncing around in my head for a while, but I wasn't sure if or how I should share it. It was a conversation that meant very little, but also meant the world. It was scary, and funny, and the moment when I realized that sometimes the people you least expect will accept you. Sometimes, even if they don't fully understand, even if they barely know you, someone will choose to support you. And that will always matter.

[saltidctenid]

Let me tell you something, as a caregiver, I have gotten the best relationship advice just by watching elderly couples in care homes. Listening to them talk about their spouse they lost, or live with still.

Love is a choice. Love takes effort and is hard and ugly at times.

When you choose your partner, think about growing old with them. Gray and wrinkled and aching joints.

Is your partner someone that you would help shower, help wipe them clean after a bathroom accident, someone you could help dress and brush in the morning?

"in sickness, til death"

Is that something you will genuinely do for them as long as you're able?

Are they someone who would do the same for you?

[saltidctenid]

“If a society puts half its children into short skirts and warns them not to move in ways that reveal their panties, while putting the other half into jeans and overalls and encouraging them to climb trees, play ball, and participate in other vigorous outdoor games; if later, during adolescence, the children who have been wearing trousers are urged to “eat like growing boys,” while the children in skirts are warned to watch their weight and not get fat; if the half in jeans runs around in sneakers or boots, while the half in skirts totters about on spike heels, then these two groups of people will be biologically as well as socially different. Their muscles will be different, as will their reflexes, posture, arms, legs and feet, hand-eye coordination, and so on. Similarly, people who spend eight hours a day in an office working at a typewriter or a visual display terminal will be biologically different from those who work on construction jobs. There is no way to sort the biological and social components that produce these differences. We cannot sort nature from nurture when we confront group differences in societies in which people from different races, classes, and sexes do not have equal access to resources and power, and therefore live in different environments. Sex-typed generalizations, such as that men are heavier, taller, or stronger than women, obscure the diversity among women and among men and the extensive overlaps between them… Most women and men fall within the same range of heights, weights, and strengths, three variables that depend a great deal on how we have grown up and live. We all know that first-generation Americans, on average, are taller than their immigrant parents and that men who do physical labor, on average, are stronger than male college professors. But we forget to look for the obvious reasons for differences when confronted with assertions like ‘Men are stronger than women.’ We should be asking: ‘Which men?’ and ‘What do they do?’ There may be biologically based average differences between women and men, but these are interwoven with a host of social differences from which we cannot disentangle them.”

— Ruth Hubbard, “The Political Nature of ‘Human Nature’“ (via gothhabiba)

Yes.

[saltidctenid]

it’s a beautiful sunny day and I’m at the ballpark with by bat. ‘it’s not that I didn’t enjoy the barbie movie as a casual watch, but something about the monologue dances along the same wavelength as the mcu girl power scene and taylor swift. that corporate feminist twang’ I say as I take my first swing

[saltidctenid]

Knowledge is empowering

[saltidctenid]

so guys turns out that being raised by queer people alienates me from the queer experience. probably not a good thing

[saltidctenid]

I’m not the girl I used to be, it’s true.  

The girl I used to be was kind and smart and quiet and tried, she tried so hard, but she also despised herself, and refused to fail, and refused to be helped.  

That girl isn’t dead at all, she just peeled backwards from the front of my mind, and now she plays in the hollow corners of my skull with all my younger selves.  She has gifted me her kindness, her intelligence, her ability to keep quiet, to be forgotten and so to hear and learn, her desire to try with every fibre of her being.  She wanted to give me her hatred, her loneliness, but I had to give those back to her.  I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to burden this child with an aching belief that she would never be good enough, but it was her or me, and growth is selfish. Sometimes she comes to the front of my mind again, and I see her, pale and afraid, and my heart breaks for her, but all I can do is tell her to be brave.  She is so alone, but I cannot allow myself to become the same.  Better one is happy than neither.    

One day the girl I am now will retreat away from the front of my mind.  She will probably nurse my younger iterations as they play, hold them when they weep, assure them they are not alone.  She is gentle like that, able to give away freely the love she kept bottled up inside her for so long.  But she is angry too often, also, and sharp and bitter even when she doesn’t want to be. She will try to give this rage to the girl I will become, and the girl I will become will apologize and give it back. The girl I am now will understand, though, because she did the same in her time.  Perhaps she will gift her anger to the girl I used to be as a shield against self-loathing.  Perhaps she and the girl I used to be will become friends.  Perhaps they will not blame the girl I will become for leaving them with horrors, for the girl I will become will carry burdens too, and it’s always difficult to blame someone who tries.  

I’m not any of the girls I used to be and one day I won’t be the girl I am.  It’s a ruthless process, and I cut new ties every day.  But those girls understand.  After all, they did the same.  And better one of us is happy than none.    

[saltidctenid]

[saltidctenid]

It only takes three generations for you to be basically forgotten

[saltidctenid]

Solar eclipse shadows

[saltidctenid]

just encountered a spider so big I very seriously considered downloading tinder exclusively to find a man to come over and move it outside

[saltidctenid]

introducing my four year old niece to the concept of "moral dilemmas" by telling her that i'm a monster that eats children and that i know it's wrong but i'm so so so hungry and everything else tastes yucky. i've tried all the human food in the world and it all tastes so yucky i can't even eat it. i can only eat children and i'm so hungry

[saltidctenid]

[saltidctenid]

Daily reminder that we do not actually live in a dystopian movie put the apocalypse down and back away slowly. You know when your cleaning a room and you pull everything out of it's draws to sort through it and you're like "what the fuck have I done I'm never going to be able to tidy all of this" I think that's the stage we're at in the world. Thanks to social media we've pulled out all the messed up shit from the cupboards of the world, it was always there but now we can see it and we're going to have to sort it all out we made this mess and we can fix it. Falling to the floor sobbing will not clean a crusty room. A group of people working systematically (preferably with music in the background) will.

[saltidctenid]