#it resonates with my experiences with being trans: sometimes you figure things out later in life

[anonymousboxcar]

Ever since hearing about/watching the 2021 Awdry Christmas lecture, I’ve been thinking about how Awdry’s notes refer to Duke as both a “he” and “she.”

In my headcanon/AU, I imagine Duke hearing that typo. Maybe it’s in a monograph that’s going around. Maybe it’s still a YouTube video in that universe, streamed on a laptop for the SKR’s engines. Regardless of how, Duke blinks at being called a “she.”

The others ask if it bothers him. He tells the truth: no, it doesn’t. There’s no harm behind it. “It was simply an accident,” he says. Yet he feels a pang in his cylinders.

Soon, he realizes that he didn’t want it to be an accident.

All his life, Duke assumed that he was only a “he.” His builders and managers told him so. He did feel like a “he” a lot of the time, and he didn’t have the space or energy to probe any deeper on the MSR.

But he’s on the SR now. He knows nobody’ll kick up a fuss, trusts everyone here. So he asks them all to call him a “she” some days — on days when “he” doesn’t settle quite right.

And it feels wonderful. It’s the same joy she felt when Stuart and Falcon called her Granpuff for the first time. “I’m not one for sentimentalities,” she says one evening, “but I truly feel… fuller, in a sense.”

Later, Rheneas and Rusty suggest the idea of different lamp irons for Duke. On days when Duke’s a “he,” he can wear a lamp with a copper handle. On days when Duke’s a “she,” she can wear a lamp with a brass handle. Duke loves this, taking it up once the works have the lamps ready. It’s quick and efficient communication.

“For once, ye’re plain-speakin’,” Duncan says once he sees the lamps. But he’s smiling. Duke smiles back, chuckling at Rusty’s eye-roll.

The only real bit of angst Duke feels over this whole thing is her name. She wants to keep it because she’s very proud of it, but she worries that His Grace wouldn’t think it proper anymore. “I couldn’t bear it if he asked me to be ‘Duchess’ on those days,” he admits.

“He won’t do that,” Skarloey tells him. “And even if he asks, you don’t have to give him anything. This isn’t a train to pull, after all. It’s something entirely yours.”

“We’re with you, Granpuff,” Peter Sam says, soft and gentle.

Sir Handel sits up tall. “He’ll have to get through us.”

In the end, Sir Robert expresses happiness on Duke’s behalf. “A title is supposed to empower you. If you feel strengthened by it, emboldened by it, then I’d say it’s the right fit!”

Duke is grateful. (So are Sir Handel and Peter Sam, who shelve their plans of vengeance on Sir Robert for saying anything different.) And life goes on even brighter and richer than before.

[oreoambitions]

If this is too personal please feel free to just ignore this ask but I was wondering if you would ever consider talking more about being non-binary/ discovering that you were non-binary? I am only just at the point of beginning to accept myself as a baby enby so I love hearing other people’s experiences but I completely understand if that’s not something you’re comfortable talking about. Hope you have a great day either way and good luck with the firefighter :)

Hey friend, I’m more than happy to talk about it! Let me start by saying welcome to the enby club, and I’m so proud of you for exploring this part of yourself! I know it can be A Lot, and sometimes pretty scary, so I applaud you for the self examination and the bravery it takes to get to this point. It took me a long time to get to where you are. I was 26 when I got drunk (for the first time bc I’m a late bloomer whee) and told a group of friends that I thought I might be nonbinary. I was openly pretty hostile towards enby folks up until that point, and I hadn’t realized that this was the gender equivalent of really entrenching yourself in homophobia because you really wish you weren’t gay. It was another six months after that before I confided in a partner about it (sober). She asked if there was another name I wanted her to use, and then proceeded to never use it. Another six months and a breakup later I took some time to consider how that’d made me feel, and I came to the conclusion that it was at the very least time to change my name. I am still figuring out the rest. In retrospect there were a few signs. As a teenager my church held a coming of age ceremony split by gender and I didn’t know where to go. A church member asked me if I was trans - meaning, was I a boy - and I said no. I’ve always been pretty clear on that. They sent me to the women’s tent, but that didn’t fit right either. I was pretty clear about that too, but since I wasn’t a trans man I thought there was just something wrong with me that I was uncomfortable with womanhood.

For a while I thought maybe it was a body image problem. If I were prettier, I would feel more like a woman. If my teeth were straighter. If I lost weight. I put myself in the hospital running track and not eating because I was desperately trying to feel ‘right’ in my body. Spoiler: that did not work. It only made things more difficult.

Then I thought maybe I was just aggressively homosexual, that the part of being “female” that I was rejecting had to do with heteronormativity. But there were things touted as universal female experiences among the queer community that fit awkwardly too, and the word ‘lesbian’ chafed. I didn’t want it applied to me even though it described me. I couldn’t explain why not. A good friend of mine came out as nonbinary a few years back. They described it as knowing that they could play the roles of male or female poorly, or they could step into a role that was right for them and live to the best of their ability. That absolutely resonated with me (and scared the heck out of me at the time) and it’s something that I still hold up when I’m struggling with my identity. Does this identity fit me awkwardly? Then it might not be right for me, and that’s okay.

The question people ask me a lot is whether I’m “really” nonbinary, or whether I just don’t want to be perceived as a woman because society treats women so badly. Whether I’ve just internalized a negative image of womanhood, and whether in a more just society I wouldn’t feel that way. And to that I say... sure, I guess maybe that could be a thing. But we don’t live in a hypothetical just society; we live in this one, and in this reality that label doesn’t suit me.

I’m still really struggling to figure out pronouns - they/them isn’t wrong but seems like a political choice, but she/her isn’t right, and he/him is right but also implies a trans binary identity which isn’t right - and I’m constantly afraid that this is Another Reason it will be difficult or impossible to find a compatible life partner. I worry that presenting too masculine or too feminine will invalidate my identity. I worry that people read me as just wanting attention and won’t take me seriously. It’s some scary stuff. It would have been easier to stay in the closet and pass as cis. But then we wouldn’t be ourselves, and that’s more difficult in some ways.

Anyway, I’m not sure if that’s what you were looking for. If you have specific questions I’m more than happy to answer them! And you can always shoot me a message if you just want to chat/vent about enby things. Always here to support baby enbies, in or out of the closet. Sending you much affection and solidarity, and I hope you are keeping safe and sane out there!

[potatopossums]

I'm sure many of us think about our identities a lot, especially in our late teens and throughout our 20s.

I've always found that process to be quite tiring. It feels circular, endless, and often anxiety-inducing in my experience. Although I appreciate the fruits that it eventually bears, it can be frustrating at times when I feel as though my self-work goes unrewarded, or not rewarded well enough. I get upset when certain habits keep resurfacing, or when old anxieties I thought I had finally resolved return stronger once more. It often feels like a whirlwind, and it makes it so easy to want to give up and just be as horrible a human being as I would normally be if I weren't trying so hard.

There are plenty of insights I could give as to how to reframe this issue mentally. I've taken lots of cognitive behavioral therapy; I know the tips and tricks, and I'm not here to knock those. Yes, they can and have worked for me, and have made a noticeable difference in how I feel. That's not my point right now, despite my better therapy'd judgment.

I think many of us grew up not really thinking about our identities. It's not like we didn't think about them at all; of course we did. We understood more or less what it was like to be in relation to others. But we didn't have a full grasp on the complexity of that. And now, many of us have a deeper, more diverse understanding of the world. As adults, we are familiar with so many social concepts. We can even look back on our own childhoods and apply our new knowledge and reframe everything. It should be a step in the right direction, and it is—but sometimes it doesn't feel like it.

That moment, or rather that process, is not one step. The moment you can look back on your own life with a very new perspective is not a simple thing. Doing that can sometimes, rather unexpectedly, cause your entire identity to shift. And that sort of change is transitional. And take it from trans people: although many of our transitions are wonderful, they're also very complicated and life-changing in not solely positive ways. And never, I mean never, are they an easy matter.

Change of any kind is challenging. Absurdly so, in fact. And I think a lot of our stress over it is caused not only by the fact that we need change, but the fact that change is difficult even when we surrender to it. Upon realization and understanding of the need for change, we don't just miraculously glide through growth as a protagonist goes through a classic training montage. Our lives are messier than that. We fuck up way more than a few comical moments for the gag reels. We sweat so hard and it just doesn't pay off sometimes, maybe a lot of the time. And that is so demoralizing.

We can want to be anything. The sky is practically the limit. But becoming that is anything but graceful.

This is not meant to be discouraging. It's meant to be empathetic. If you related at all to this, I want you to remember that sigh of upset relief you might have experienced while reading. I want you to remember that some rando on the internet said something about pain and frustration that resonated with you. I want you to remember how many people liked or reblogged or interacted with this post. Remember that feeling of being heard and seen for exactly where you are. You're in a messy spot right now. You don't want to be there. Neither do I. Neither does anyone else around you. It's okay to be where you are. I won't tell you that you did your best, because sometimes "doing our best" isn't even what we want. Sometimes "doing our best" doesn't represent our true desires, be it for that day, that week, or that year. Sometimes we are genuinely stuck, despite all we've done. Sometimes we don't have the energy to try at all.

So here's what I'll tell you instead. You were a human being today. You tried, or maybe you didn't. Maybe you thought really hard about trying. Maybe you did the bare minimum. Maybe you did absolutely nothing. Maybe you literally got in trouble for doing nothing.

And look, you're still fucking here.

You're alright. Take a breather. A real breather. The kind where you actually do get to forget the world and all your responsibilities for a moment. Really try. I know you've been trying to forget how much stuff you need to do all day anyway, so here's your free pass. Fuck all that stuff for five minutes.

Do something 100% for you right now. Something you can do easily, something you can start basically right this second, something you know you'll like. I don't care how simple or easy or stupid it is, whether it's watching a video or listening to a song, or giving yourself a neck massage, or simply taking a breather, or spacing out and imagining your happy place. Whatever it is that you can do right now, with zero prep. No dawdling, no trying to figure out what to do for the whole time. Gut instinct, there's no wrong answer, just pick something. And do that. For five minutes. Don't look at the clock. I'll wait, and so will the world.

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Check in.

Note your emotions. How your body feels.

Notice that, and let it pass. Perhaps later you'll remember it, and perhaps not. Maybe a mix of both. That's normal.

Comfort is found in repetition. Excitement is found in the new. Make sure you have equal parts of both today, even if you must allot it yourself.

The most beautiful feeling you can have is when you accept that you have earned the right to fully enjoy your rest. That acceptance is just as much internal as it is external.

Thank you for resting today.

[androgyne-acolyte]

The Radical Queer Gospel

(My first try at a sermon, for Pride Sunday 2019. You can also listen on Soundcloud.)

Why do we need a Pride Sunday? Especially in June? [Note: our local Pride festival is held in July.]

Because there is still a great lie that queer people — LGBTQ+ people — and Christians can’t get along.

I’ve had people on the internet tell me that my decision to go into ministry as a genderqueer person is worthless, because “the belief system of some two-thousand-year-old desert tribe didn’t care about being nice to gay people”. We routinely get messages telling us our church sign is wrong.

Anyone can spout talking points about this; but wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. [cf. Matthew 11:19]

I’m going to tell you about Jesus today; how he lived, and what he taught. For me, there is something powerfully relatable about the shape of Jesus’ life; not just as a person of faith, but as a queer person. I want to talk about how Jesus’ story resembles, in many ways, nothing so much as a queer life — with all the upheaval, scandal, and confounding of expectations that implies.

I’m certainly not saying that Jesus was gay, or trans, or intersex. Queer is a more expansive term than that, and is a much more immediately transgressive term; it’s a term, quite honestly, that is still very much connected to its origins as a term of abuse. While it can refer to anyone who experiences homophobia or transphobia, it carries with it a connotation of a way of being that goes against the grain; a state of being not quite one thing and not quite another.

But, fair warning: its use is sometimes quite contentious, even discouraged, within the wider LGBTQ+ community, especially when used by people who would not consider themselves “queer”. I’m using it today, however, because I’m speaking from my own point of view.

Jesus is born as an ordinary peasant, the son of a teenage mother and a carpenter — you know the story. He lives under military occupation by the Roman Empire, which has annexed all the best land; demands punitive taxes to build palaces in fortified seaport towns; has taken over the Jerusalem Temple, hiring and firing high priests at will, and doesn’t hesitate to violently crush any sign of dissent.

But as Jesus grows up, he starts to realize that he is called to be something different, something that will disturb the very fabric of the society that he lives in. He finds community through John the Baptist, a strange, wild figure who has quite a following, mostly among the more downtrodden parts of society — and through John he gets initiated into a new kind of life, a new way of being.

Then, Jesus begins to get noticed. Imagine the young Jesus, certainly no older than I am now, speaking in the synagogues all across the countryside of Galilee. And when he gets to his hometown of Nazareth, he stands in front of all his family and friends and begins to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives … to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” … The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:18-21)

This reads, to me, like a coming-out narrative. Because Jesus immediately follows up this seemingly empowering message with a bunch of uncomfortable truths that they don’t want to hear — namely, by citing the story of the prophet Elijah to make the point that God works from the margins of society, and plants the seeds of prophecy and change from the bottom up. “No prophet is accepted in their own country,” declares Jesus — and the congregation who had just minutes before said “Wow! This kid is going places! Joseph, isn’t this your son?” turn around and try to run him out of town.

There is something else here that the gospels aren’t quite obvious about. Jesus is giving up his place in the family structure that bound Judean culture together; striking out on his own, all the way to the raggedy edge — to share his message of healing and justice and resilience in the face of Roman occupation with those whom his people would have considered foreigners and outcasts.

It’s almost certain that Joseph assumed that Jesus would come of age and take on his father’s trade, inheriting his tools and going to work as a day labourer in Roman construction projects. All of a sudden, that’s not going to happen — because Jesus has fallen in with a very strange crowd; he’s been influenced by these people, and has come back home full of uncanny zeal and radical ideas.

I can imagine all too well the sight of Mary grieving for the image of the son she loved, who she assumed would grow up, settle down, and have children of his own — but all of a sudden he’s someone different; someone or something that can’t quite be contained. I can imagine this all too well because my own mother, my own father, have both gone through this.

But as it turns out, Jesus had discovered — he had understood, had even begun to embody — a kind of love that had never been thought possible; a kind of love that was so radical and so powerful that a lot of folks outright rejected it. The people in power certainly weren’t into it.

This is a kind of story that should absolutely resonate with queer folks like me, because we have a very similar experience — with and through each other. The dawning realization that we are meant for a different kind of life; something which not everyone can understand, but which we suddenly realize is beautiful. That moment when you see someone else, in person or in the media, who embodies an indescribable feeling that you have kept tucked away inside of you for your entire life.

Isn’t it possible that those ordinary semi-literate fishermen, Peter and Andrew and James and John, had a similar experience — seeing something in Jesus that was so powerful, so compelling, that they couldn’t help but respond when he said “follow me”?

We queer people know a kind of love that wrenches us out of the closet and into the sunlight; a kind of love that makes us feel beautiful and strong and valued in a way that no other love has before; a love that opens our hearts to weep at the injustices done to our queer siblings, our trans siblings, our Two-Spirit siblings throughout history;

A love that can make us fearless, so that no catcalling, no misgendering, no homophobic preaching, no gay-bashing, no parental rejection can dissuade us from living out the kind of love to which we are called; the ways of being that upset cultural assumptions and power structures that most of us take as fact.

The love that took root in Jesus’ movement was one that breached walls and broke down borders; that reached across ancient religious schisms — such as the one between the Judeans and the Samaritans, who wouldn’t even speak to each other; that uplifted and empowered women; that extended all the way to the Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts — who would have been considered not only foreign, but ritually unacceptable as a person! — to heal and unify and plant the seeds of distributive justice through small, beautiful, subversive actions. And it didn’t stop there.

Near the end of the Gospel of Matthew, some of the Roman-backed chief priests and elders come up to Jesus and start questioning him. But he takes the wind out of their sails by telling them a parable:

“What do you think? A man had two sons [keep in mind that in a lot of Bible stories, the second son is the underdog who comes out on top]; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the [sex workers] are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (Matthew 21:28-31)

(Look at it this way; at least no one can accuse me of not being Bible-based.)

That passage is a proverbial smoking gun; of all the sayings in the Gospels, it’s the one that is still immediately subversive to us today. But it’s true, Jesus explains, because there’s one thing that the most stigmatized, most down-and-out people in society have that the respectable folks who actually obey the traffic laws and run the Temple don’t — and that is, a thirst for hope and meaning and healing, and a reason to imagine that another world is possible.

So, I’ll say it right now: I am not going into ministry to uphold the stability of the mainline church in its current form. I am going into ministry in the hope that I can help make the church into a refuge, where everyone has the opportunity and the tools to heal and thrive and care for one another; where this transformative divine love is as present and as accessible as the air we breathe.

I believe that I am called, among other things, to be a minister to and for my queer and trans siblings, for my radical siblings; to be an instrument of disorientation and reorientation and renewal and healing for the wounds that the church at large has inflicted by confusing white heteronormative Western social conventions with the actual, radical teachings of christianity.

Because how many queer and transgender children have been turned away, just like Jesus was run out of his hometown, by parents and communities and churches who don’t understand them?

I think what Jesus says to his own people later on in the Gospel of Matthew is something he might say to my radical queer siblings, and to the church that has historically rejected them, today:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children [— your queer and trans and non-binary children —] together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate.” (Matthew 23:37-38)

Because the great tragedy here is that that vital, transcendent love should have been the church’s stock in trade all along. We, the church, have the capacity and the knowledge to reach back to our radical, counter-cultural roots and throw people a lifeline of meaning and hope and healing in a tempest-tossed world — but in the eyes of far too many, we are still at best a bastion of the status quo.

I’ve connected with some wonderful radical theological people through the internet; one particular person, by the name of Jane Nichols — a remarkable lesbian trans woman who just completed her master’s degree in theology — says it better than I ever could:

[O]ur stance towards exclusionary theology should not be ‘well, actually, if we look in the Bible, we can see that it never actually forbids being gay,’ but instead, ‘how dare [we] presume to limit God’s love? What blasphemous arrogance could have possibly led [us] to where [we ended up]? When did [we] start worshipping [our] own image in place of the Divine?’ (Jane Nichols, Tumblr post, May 2019)

Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.

Where I have found the Holy Spirit alive and well and pushing the envelope is on the margins of almost every sphere. Most immediately, I encounter it in the deep insight and vulnerability of the women clergy members in my life — and most recently, I have seen it spring to life in the passion and brilliance and vision of the lesbian and queer women clergy with whom I was privileged to commune on the sidelines of the former Maritime Conference.

By the way — Jesus’ story is hardly the only one that’s relatable to queer and trans people like us. The Bible is replete with stories of transformation, of coming into new identity and purpose, even gender-ambiguity, if you know where — and how — to look.

Yes, queer people — LGBTQ+ people — and Christians, followers of Jesus, can and should get along. Yes, queer people can be Christian, and Christians can be queer; and yes, we can and should learn from one another!

Because we have a remarkable common ground — a remarkable birthright:

We are called to go against the grain; to challenge the basic patterns in which our societies operate, and to embrace a new and powerful kind of love;

a love that reshapes the way we think about ourselves, a love that beckons us to healing and renewal, a love that calls us to take action and cry out for justice, a love that is itself a radical way of being; a love that is potentially more beautiful and more life-giving than the power structures of this world are ready to understand.

Amen.

June 2, 2019 — St. Andrew’s United Church, Halifax

[rustandyearnings]

Calling In, Take 2: Power, Accountability, Movement, and the State

In the winter of 2013, I wrote a piece titled, “Calling IN: A Less Disposable Way of Holding Each Other Accountable.” Over the next four years or so, this piece would become the bane of my existence. Let me explain.

This piece sort of exploded – I was receiving emails and messages that the piece was really resonating with folks doing justice work across all types of communities. It was true and probably is still true how tired we all are of the constant worry that we cannot make mistakes – not even among those who we call friends, family, and/or comrades.

There have been numerous challenges that have arisen since the publication of this piece. The first is that it was so wildly appropriated by white people to rationalize or justify their own racist behavior. It’s been wildly appropriated to push away valid critique of racist or otherwise oppressive behavior. I remember as Ani DiFranco was being called out for playing music at a slave plantation, that white lesbians were quoting “Calling In” to tell Black women and women of color that they shouldn’t be critiquing Ani (or other white people) in such a harsh way. I don’t think I need to offer any more examples on how this piece or this concept has been misconstrued to mean, “I can do whatever I want and you have to be nice to me.”

The second challenge actually has a lot more to do with my own political development than external factors—how it was being read by my community or how it was being used by those inside and outside of my community. In the four years since writing this piece, I regret to some extent not writing more about the relationship we have to each other in movement versus our relationship to each other and that relationship to the state – the apparatus which seeks to and often succeeds at dividing, repressing, and conquering (literally and metaphorically) us.

I have become regularly frustrated by some of the contexts in which “calling in” has been used or named. It’s less about people annoying me (because people annoy me a lot) or some idea that I am the arbitrator of what “calling in” as an accountability practice or process actually means. It is actually more about the individualistic ways we think of accountability, power, and our relationships to each other. In many ways it is not surprising that we conceptualize ourselves as simply individuals. We are born into this world by ourselves (unless we’re a twin or a triplet, or something, but you get my point), we experience much of the world with only ourselves (even if many of our experiences involve others), at night we fall asleep and wander into the dream world on our own, and when we die – and we all die – we die alone.

We take the reality of the human experience as being both terrifyingly and rewardingly lonely and compound it with the deadliest economic, political, and social system in existence, capitalism, and most of us end up having a lot of shit to unpack around our individualism, and specific to this context, our understanding of harm and repair.

So what does it mean to hold each other accountable in a world that is incredibly messy? In a world where we don’t have much to rely on but the reality that things are incredibly messiness? That isn’t to say that there aren’t topics or issues where we are capable of drawing a clear line. We know how to do that – that’s why we have vibrant social movements.

But we have to start figuring out the space that exists between ourselves and our communities, our communities and the movement, and the movement and the state. Not only do we have to start figuring out that space, we have to do this in a way that is honest, transformative, and real.

I don’t think that I can say this enough: we are human beings and we have our shit. We carry with us the traumas we experience from early ages, that we don’t start developing different coping mechanisms for until later in life. For some of us, it is much later in life or it is never actually dealt with at all.

Being in movement has taught me that movement brings together the maladjusted weirdos of society who have decided or have been led to doing something about their own and others’ maladjustment. When I say “maladjusted” I am capturing a pretty broad stroke of people who are, by the standards of this system and society, not fit to be a part of this system and society. We are rightfully upset, uncomfortable, and angry. In most aspects of our lives – at our jobs, in our classrooms, in our neighborhoods, and most public spaces, including those that are allegedly democratically elected to represent us, we do not belong nor do we have power.

Movement is where we have power. Movement is where those of us who have seen the most fucked up shit; have made a whole lot out of the nothing slapped to us by capitalism; have had to endure the incredulous crimes against humanity, whether it be gentrification or police brutality, homelessness or addiction, incarceration or unemployment; have once believed that we might not survive another day have managed to find others, to find a way, and to fight for our right to life every day.

The power we have in movement spaces is beautiful, transformative, and sometimes (and increasingly so) threatening to those who have power over us. But the power we have can sometimes fuck us up. Let’s be real. Sometimes we get power and suddenly no one is a friend, it’s only foes. And it’s especially foes if not everyone agrees with us. Sometimes we get power and we become stagnant, we start operating in the interest of preserving our own power, instead of remembering why people’s power means anything to begin with: we have to build with other people to win. Our fingers tight as a fist are much stronger than they are a part. Our arms linked are a much stronger barricade than our shoulders alone in the cold. The harmony of many voices is much louder than just one.

The movement gives us power and we start acting like calling out greedy politicians and corporate profiteers or politicians who want to rid the world of queer and trans people is the same as calling out our cousin who makes sexist jokes at the family reunion or even a fellow organizer who takes up a lot of space as a white person. These are fundamentally different relationships. Our relationships to capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy as pillars holding up a destructive and deadly system is fundamentally different than our relationships to the human beings who have to survive these systems. 

The state is an oppressive force that seeks to cultivate division and thrives on our disconnection and alienation from each other. Let’s try our best to not feed it with our harms and grievances as if it could help us resolve them.

Our movement is, in many ways, fighting to confront the state. We are disrupting the institutions and systems harming our people. Our movement is not mechanized with an oppressive ideology; we are not weaponizing ourselves toward profit; we are not propping up fake democracy to make the rich more comfortable; we are not fighting to dispose of our people, leave our people behind or for dead. If we are truly building our movement to confront the state, we’ve got to stop treating each other like the mistakes we commit are the same heinous crimes that the state commits against our people. We are all capable of causing harm but we can’t operate as if the harm we cause to each other is the same as what we experience from the state. Often, the harm we cause to each other happens in the process of trying to build a different world.

Somewhere along the lines, the idea of “calling in” was put in opposition to “calling out.” I don’t believe that such dichotomy exists, since I think that our accountability should be more rooted in our understanding of power, to each other and to the forces that seek to exert power over us, than rooted in our individualism and selfishness about who gets to be right and who is wrong.

But ultimately, whether you want to call in or call out, let’s all try to be on the same page about who our shared enemy is – and it is not each other. I stick by a lot of what I originally wrote in that piece in 2013. Movement building is about relationship building. And it’s also about nuance. In the piece I elaborated on how we use our relationships as the basis for determining whether we "call in" or "call out." I’m still less interested in how we label our processes for holding each other accountable and more interested in the process itself. Some questions that I would pose to folks when they are deciding how they want to deal with an oppressive situation are: what is the depth of the relationship I have with this person? Are they someone I consider an acquaintance? A friend? A comrade? What values do we share (if any) and what are they? 

There are deeper political questions that should inform how to hold people accountable, too -- because everything is political and more importantly, because everything requires us to think of ourselves within the context of a broader society. Our society necessitates harm in order to thrive and it can either continue to thrive or be delegitimized based on our responses to harm. We live in a real society of disposability. We talk about it a lot but I think sometimes we forget how entrenched we are in it. When we talk about the prison industrial complex, we are talking about a world that puts people in cages for the rest of their lives because of an accountability system where the state arbitrates who gets to make mistakes and who doesn't. The structural violence carried out by the state shapes and informs how we relate to each other interpersonally.

Lately I’ve been returning to the fact that we are human beings. This kind of statement is obviously a little oversimplifying. We are human beings who are greedy, selfish, cruel, unforgiving, vengeful and also deeply feeling, compassionate, remorseful, creative, apologetic, loving, and caring. Some of the human beings on this earth commit viler nastiness than just being human – we know that this shows up in our communities and in the broader world as sexual, emotional, and physical violence, all tied and connected to capitalist exploitation and oppression: white supremacy and anti-blackness, transmisogyny and homophobia, islamophobia and xenophobia, Zionism and anti-Semitism and more.

I'm not saying that there is never harm nor that we should martyrize ourselves to minimize the harm we experience. I'm saying we should remember we have all caused harm, have the propensity to cause harm and if causing harm or making mistakes were the basis for whether or not we maintain community with each other instead of our humanity, our dignity, our aptitude for change, and our belief in a radically different and better world, we'd have no community. And probably just as scary, if not more, we’d have no movement.

There is no perfect way to deal with harm or conflict. We are trying our best to maintain our relationship to each other and ourselves in a world that is routinely dehumanizing, under a system that doesn’t care about what we mean to each other. But we should care about what we mean to each other.

As a queer and gender non-conforming person of color, a migrant from Viet Nam, and a communist, what keeps me alive is the fact that everything changes – that in fact, everything must change. When something has stopped changing, it’s dead. If there’s nothing that is useful from this piece, any of my (largely unoriginal) musings on power, accountability, movement, and the state – I hope at least that we can all remember and respect that everything changes. That this be a gift we do not take for granted, that this be a gift we give to each other in service of a better world, a world where not only are we capable of transforming but one that our transformation made possible.

In the spirit of change, I acknowledge that four years from now I might write a totally different piece, depending on where the forces of this gruesome planet are, depending on the tenacity and resilience of humanity, I might write a take three. But for now, I hope that I’ve done some justice to those who I am fighting alongside with each and every day, whose mistakes I share in, whose vision I believe in and co-create, whose wisdom, commitment, and revolutionary optimism reminds me that healing, being free, and almost anything is possible.

[fatcowboys]

hey so matt did that livestream yesterday where he was asked questions and at one point the taryon discourse came up and i was curious so i watched it, then transcribed it (because im procrastinating studying) for anyone who’s curious but doesn’t have a G&S subscription. putting it under a read more bc its freaking LONG. i tried to get the whole thing so nothing would be out of context, but i didn’t transcribe a part in the middle where he discusses a relative but yknow. 

small warning the f slur is used once (to discuss something w matt not like. as slang or anything like that.) but just fyi. timestamps included under the cut if anyone wants to find it. 

if you could avoid starting arguements in the comments/replies to this post that would be great? like make your own posts discussing it and feel free to use the quotes but like. avoid commenting directly on this bc that will make my notifications Hell lmao

Time Stamp: 1:20:21-1:28:29

I want to bring this up real fast, because I feel like it’s important. I wanted to apologize legitimately to anyone who felt uncomfortable in the story the last Taryon episode and kind of reveal there and I apologize if that hit too close to home, if that was not the representation of the story you wanted seen I understand it made a lot of people feel uncomfortable and I’m sorry. I’m legitimately sorry.

I put a post about it on twitter but text is easy to be misconstrued and you only have so much brain space to put out there. I’m sure that I’ve been torn apart and that’s fine. I admit that, however I do think its important story to tell from what we understand of it and when I say from what we understand  it, y’know, we all come from different background.

And its gonna be little real here for a second. But we have our experiences to pull from when it comes to story. We as actors we write we create from experience and Exandria is very much an open environment for the most part. People are, sexualities is just an open thing in society. There are couples form all different walks of life, asexual, trans nonbinary, gay. Bi, everything.

And it’s all kind of open in the world. Is the world free of ignorance? No. that’s part of life and part of the story because, yknow, people are flawed, people are stupid, and its minimized in our world because I like to imagine a world where it is largely minimized but that doesn’t mean its not going to exist. And what little bit of Tary’s story we’ve touched, on a lot of which was improvised by Sam on the spot, and a lot of we’ve talked about since then, and we developed a little bit beforehand to an extent, I think is an important story to tell, and parts of us resonate.

A lot of people were concerned we were making fun of his kind of awakening, his coming to terms with his venture in the last episode and I can honestly say that if it came across that way I’m sorry. We’re very, very sensitive to these things and many of us have lived very close to or dealt with homophobia on our end as well.

Yknow I grew up a very androgynous long haired pretty boy who was quiet and spent a large number of my years being called “f*ggot” and being pushed around and I have a lot of very, very important people in my life who have dealt with far worse and who have undergone a lot of terrible circumstances and I feel for that. And my uncle ted, for instance…

[matt discusses a relative who was married with a child, then discovered he was gay and discusses that a bit his uncle passing away later from HIV/AIDS.]

[After discussing his relative….]

I know that parts of Tary’s tale may not be the representation that some people hope for in media, but I try my best to represent other happier lives in things where that was an open and viable circumstance. Tary’s is important for people who grew up in a circumstance like many of my friends did and didn’t have that open welcoming scenario. [Matt is handed a tissue, says “can you believe I’m doing this on the internet”]

Anyway, I’m sorry I’m doing the best I can. And not all stories are for everybody. I can’t please everybody in the choices I make and I mess up, and I fail, and I stumble, and even if a few people get offended, I can’t help but feel bad because I hate hurting people. But I promise I’m doing my best. That’s all.

Yknow when I said Tary’s experience, his scenario at the end of the last episode with Trish reminded me of a lot of friends growing up … every person has a point in their life where they struggle with their own identity and I had that too. I identify as heterosexual I’ve had my years of curiosity, I’ve had my years of trying to figure out what I was, who I was.

And I myself am primarily attracted to women but there are men I’m kinda attracted to in life but its mostly about the person, the individual, and uh sometimes it takes an experience like what tary had to finally feel confident and in not a judgmental way.

His was a little more [unknwon] because its Sam and we want to play up the discomfort of a secret sometimes with humor to offset it but we try to treat it with respect because a lot of it plays with to elements of our own lives or of people who are close with us

So Tary’s journey in some ways is personal for myself and for people close to us so we’re trying. Uh, anyway….

[zorilleerrant]

...but am I trans?

That’s a big question. Maybe too big. Let’s break it down instead.

Do I like my name?

Here’s a big thing people get caught up on: they either think they can’t be trans, because they like the gendered name they’ve been using, or they think they must be trans, because they like some other gendered name. There are plenty of reasons you might like a name, gender aside! Instead of asking yourself what it has to do with your gender, make a list of names you like, or stick with one (or several) you’re already using. You can use whatever name you want, even if it doesn’t ‘match’ your gender, and you don’t have to be trans to change your name. Pick one that makes you happy!

What pronouns do I want to use?

A lot of trans people like to stick with the pronouns they’ve used since they were little because they’re used to them, especially nonbinary people, who might not like any of the options we have right now. A lot of nonbinary people also prefer to switch to the other binary pronoun to reinforce that they’re not their assigned gender (since many people have trouble understanding nonbinary genders). Both nonbinary and binary trans people may use their assigned pronouns or multiple pronouns, to prevent people from trying to harass them using pronouns, or to make it hurt less when they do. And regardless of whether people are cis or trans, there’s a long history of women using he/him, men using she/her, or either using they/them or some of the longstanding neopronouns. Find pronouns that feel comfortable to you, and go ahead and ask your friends to use them. Even if you like more than one set! You can always change your mind if you stop liking them, or find something you like better.

What gendered terms do I want people to use for me?

This can be things like titles - Mr./Ms./Mx. - or things that refer to someone in a gendered way - brother, sister, sibling. These often won’t match up to the pronouns someone uses, so don’t worry if they’re different! Many people want to use things that are gender neutral in a political way, regardless of their gender. Other people might want to use gendered terms for the same reasons as pronouns, and that’s pretty common regardless of gender. Many people prefer a mix of things, or prefer different things in different situations. Figure out what makes you comfortable! Don’t try to figure out what gender label you like first, because that’s much harder; instead of asking whether people should call you things like man, woman, nonbinary, ask whether you want to be called boyfriend, girlfriend, datemate. There are a lot more possible combinations here than with pronouns, so take your time.

Do I want to change my body shape?

This is a difficult question for a lot of people, because they focus only on what they find upsetting about their bodies, and then try to gauge whether it’s upsetting ‘enough’. That’s not the question, though. If there are things that it would make you less upset if you changed them, that’s important! But if there are things that would make you happier if you changed them, regardless of how you feel right now, that’s important, too! It may be difficult to weight the pros and cons, but you should try out some shaping garments if that seems like a thing that might be helpful to you. You could also try wearing clothes that emphasize or deemphasize different aspects of your body. Many trans people don’t feel this way, and many cis people do feel this way, so you don’t have to figure out whether you’re trans first. If you feel this way only some of the time, that’s pretty common, too! A lot of multigender people feel like that regularly, but binary people (cis and trans) do too sometimes. There’s a lot of different experiences out there, so you should try different things and see what makes you happy.

Do I want to change how my body looks to other people or to me?

If you only want to change how other people see your body, how they read your physical form, or what you look like in public, you probably don’t want to do much to change your anatomy. That’s likely to make you feel worse, if anything. You should look into shaping garments, prostheses, and makeup. Then, when you’re alone, you can take it all off. If you’d like to change your body even if you were all alone and no one could see it, then you should think about hormones and surgery. Not altogether, though! Think of each potential step separately, and consider it independent of everything else. If you’d like only part of it, that’s usually possible! A lot of people have undergone modified hormone regimens, and more are being designed all the time. Surgeries usually have a lot of potential variation, too! There’s actually a pretty long history of people who identify with their agab getting HRT and/or surgery, so you can do this even if you’re pretty sure you identify with your assigned gender - you would just need to find doctors who are supportive of patient choice above gatekeeping. Many nonbinary people also get HRT/surgery. Many nonbinary people don’t, and many binary trans people also don’t. Don’t worry about how it reflects on your identity, just ask yourself whether you’d like to change your body, and if so, how.

What flags do I like? What words sound good to me?

Just look around. If there are words that call to you, even if you’re not sure how you feel about their definitions, go ahead and use them for a while. You can try telling a few of your friends. You don’t have to tell anyone at all. Just try on the words, and if you like them, keep them. If you don’t, find new ones. If you change your mind later, go ahead and pick new terms! You can keep them as long as you want, or change them as often as you want. And you can definitely pick more than one! Same goes for flags. Shop around and see which ones you like best, even if they don’t seem to fit your identity. You can get stickers or make little drawing on sticky notes and keep them around you while you’re deciding, if you want - some of them will probably start to make you happier or mean more to you than others. And you can have as many as you want!

How do I want to dress?

This might be a different question in different circumstances. Maybe you want to wear things at home totally unlike what you wear in public, or wear things with some friends and not others. This will be different for everyone. Many people don’t feel comfortable wearing different clothing to work, even when they’re very sure they’re trans, for example. Ask whether you want to wear ‘men’s clothing’ or ‘women’s clothing’, or things that are considered masculine or feminine. Many cis people wear gender non-conforming clothes, and so do many binary trans people. Nonbinary people often have strongly gendered presentations. And almost everybody wears something androgynous at least some of the time. This is likely to change over time and in different circumstances, too. For some people this is totally unrelated to their gender. For other people, this is an important factor in their gender, both because presentation can influence how you feel about your gender, and because your relationship to your gender can influence how you want to present. It’s not necessary for you to figure out your gender before you figure out how you want to dress, and for you personally, it might not be important at all. In any case, figuring out what clothing and accessories you like and what makes you feel good will help you be happier and more at home with yourself, regardless of your gender.

What groups make me feel most accepted? Where do I feel like myself?

If you spend time in different community spaces, some of them will seem to speak more to your experience than others. Some of them will seem more welcoming. Some of them will feel like you’re just playing along, others will seem more authentic. This isn’t foolproof by any means, because lots of communities don’t resonate with people for reasons unrelated to gender, and sometimes there are just mean people around. But these kinds of feelings can sometimes tell you what direction to look in to find your gender. Look for positivity and advice posts, too; some of them will feel like they’re addressed to you more than others. And remember, this can change over time! Sometimes quickly, especially in the case of genderfluid and genderflux people, but sometimes after many years. This might mean your identity changed, or your understanding of it changed, or just the way you most want to express it changed. Any of those is okay! If you feel confident in some identity, find a group that supports you in that identity, because groups all have different dynamics. Or, if you find a group you really relate to, try to find other groups with a similar feel if you’re still questioning. You can question for as long as you need to, and as many times as you need to. No harm in that, especially if your feelings changed.

Do I like the word ‘trans’?

Well, how do you feel about it? Do you feel happy when you think about it, does it make you smile? Or maybe you feel indifferent. Maybe you feel discordant thinking about that, like it’s off somehow. If any of the above questions seems to address your concerns, you definitely fall within the wider trans umbrella, the one that was originally invented to create solidarity around gender identity and presentation. So you can feel free to call yourself trans if you like it even a little bit. Or, if you dislike it, there’s no reason you have to call yourself trans. The label is there to help people, not put you in yet another box. If you don’t have much feeling about it either way, or you can’t tell how you feel, there’s no reason you have to decide. Think about the things that will make a difference in your day to day life, instead of getting hung up on a single word, no matter how much weight it might seem to carry socially. You can always decide later, and you can always change your mind.