30 Days of Drabble - Day 6

Day 6 - Letters
(Sorry I'm late. I got caught up in things, and blogging has never been one of my strong points. I'm trying.)

Lex sat on the bed, staring blankly at the box in front of him. He ran his hands over the papers in it, thinking about Jennifer, and fighting with everything he had to not cry again. They had been high school sweethearts, passing notes in class. Lex gave a wan smile, remembering how Jennifer had been the type to keep everything. He picked up one of her letters and started reading. They had only been married for two months, and only moved into their first house a month after that. One week later, she was hit by a drunk driver.

30 Days of Drabble - Day 5

Day 5 - Transformation

Dear gods, when had she ever been that person? Katie looked through her book of memories that she'd kept since she was young. She saw a naive, enthusiastic Christian. The kind who actually protested at Pride parades. She was guilty of many hateful diatribes against people who were different than her. But, it had all started to change with a look at just the wrong time. Or right, depending on how you look at it. As she laid her head in her girlfriend's lap, still flipping through the book, she realized that, yes, she had. And thankfully, she'd learned better.

30 Days of Drabble - Day 4

Day 4 - Tremble

Alexis had been in bed for twenty minutes now. It was the end of a very long day, and she deserved some time to unwind. Her fingers trailed along her navel up to her breasts. Lightly pinching her nipples brought a soft moan. Her other hand was between her legs, touching her in places that had been desolate for so long. She hit her crescendo, her voice somewhere between singing and screaming. As her orgasm wound down, she cooed softly and smiled at her damp, trembling fingers. It had been too long since she'd gotten laid. Time to fix that.

30 Days of Drabble - Day 3

Day 3 -  Companion

James and Ruth stood outside in the cold air. They met 5 years ago, at their college Christmas party, and it felt like yesterday. Ruth laid her head on James' shoulder, almost purring as John stroked her hair. “So, Ruth, I have something to ask you.” She looked up at him, expectantly. “What, another mini-vacation?” He chuckled, shaking his head. “No, this is something better.” He pulled out a small blue police box and handed it to her. Ruth took it, and opened the flip top to find a ring and a note, which said “Will you be my companion?”

30 Days of Drabble - Day 2

Day 2 - I chose "move" as my theme.

She had to keep moving to survive. That's all she knew. Sleeping for a few hours in an alleyway, then in a secluded spot in a park for another few hours. She'd lost her home of 10 years, all because her parents were bigoted assholes. A homeless girl can be prey for almost anyone. Then she unwittingly stumbled into a gang's territory and pissed them off. She had nowhere safe to lay her head. She had to keep running. Maybe she could find her way out of the city. It's a pretty big place, though. Too easy to get lost.

30 Days of Drabble - Day 1

Day 1 - Beginning

She sat there, nervously staring at her monitor. "I really shouldn't be doing this," she thought to herself for the hundredth time today. And those fantasies were some doozies. She'd been to stage shows, seen the specials on television, even looked on Youtube at clips of cartoons and amateurs. "This is insane. It's all fake, anyway." This had become a mantra in her mind, even as she had looked and explored, fantasized and orgasmed. She finally double-clicked on the mp3, her hand shaking. Her eyes closed, as the soft, firm voice intoned “Hello there. Now it's time to relax...”

Ok. Time to seriously kick the dust off this blog, and get my creative juices flowing. Here we go!

Using the prompts below, write a drabble (or whatever) a day for the next 30 days. Find someone willing to hit you if you miss a day. Look back at the end and go ‘Oh! I’m a writer!’.

• Beginning 
• Accusation
• Restless 
• Snowflake 
• Haze 
• Flame 
• Formal 
• Companion 
• Move 
• Silver 
• Prepared 
• Knowledge 
• Denial 
• Wind 
• Order 
• Thanks 
• Look 
• Summer 
• Transformation 
• Tremble 
• Sunset 
• Mad 
• Thousand 
• Outside 
• Winter 
• Diamond 
• Letters 
• Promise 
• Simple 
• Future

Hi, dear readers! Hope you all have been well. I've been trying to get myself straight after I lost my job at the gas station. Interestingly, not long after that, I got invited to be a bridesmaid at a friend's wedding. As planning for that was happening, I ended up also added an extra leg to the trip. I would be visiting my friend Jaya for a few days before I go to the wedding.

And there was a bit of drama over whether and how I'd be able to make it. I was able to wrangle the money for the trip. Not long after that, I got asked to be the godmother for another friend's baby.

As I currently write, I am in Chicago, on a 12 hour layover. I have been awake since 3 yesterday afternoon. I'm going to try and post more, particularly during this trip.

Another Tumblr post copy/pasted here for my friends and others

14 Reasons Why It’s Not Okay to Out Someone as Trans – A Public Service Announcement From Your Friendly, Neighborhood Trans Person


Some people might feel like they are being helpful to out someone as trans. Whether it's done to theoretically avoid dating issues or to alleviate potential confusion, or for any myriad of other reasons, it's a bad idea. I found this on Tumblr through genderbitch, and I wanted to share it here.

1.  Safety firstIn April of 2010, Colle Carpenter, a 27-year-old trans man, was physically assaulted in a men’s room at Cal State University Long Beach, the attacker using a knife to carve the word “it” into his chest.  Two months later, a man attacked trans man Lance Reyna in a Houston Community College men’s room, putting a knife to his throat, then beating and robbing him and giving him a concussion by kicking him in the head.  In April of 2011,Chrissy Lee Polis, a 22-year-old transgender woman, was brutally attacked by two women in a Baltimore-suburb McDonald’s while employees stood by and watched, one of them filming a video of the assault that went viral after being posted on-line.  The attackers beat Chrissy so severely, she went into an epileptic seizure on the floor of the restaurant.

I provide these examples here to highlight the threat of violence that trans people face simply for being themselves, and to illustrate that outing someone as trans compromises their safety. Granted, these are high-profile incidents, but don’t think that these are isolated cases.  Aggressions against trans people occur at various levels of severity on a fairly regular basis.  I know a number of trans men and women who have been harassed and/or physically assaulted by people they had come out to or by people, including complete strangers, who had somehow learned of their trans status.  Trust me on this one;you cannot predict how anyone will react to this information, so it’s best not to disclose it.

2.  It’s private, medical information
Steps that a trans person may take to transition are recognized by the American Medical Association, other health-care organizations, the U.S. Tax Court and by many trans people as medical treatments for the misalignment of their physical sex and gender identity.  Information about a trans person’s status and/or transition should therefore be held in confidence just like any other person’s private medical issues and treatments and should not be disclosed.

3.  Not all trans people are activists and those who are might not want to be all the time
Some trans people don’t mind being in the public eye.  Trans people involved in activism may be fully and publicly out as trans, such as community activists and educators Matt Kailey, Jamison Green,  Kate Bornstein or Donna Rose.  However, not all trans folks want to be involved in activism – they just want to live their lives with a level  of anonymity that’s no different from that of non-trans people – and those who are involved as activists might not wish to wear that hat all the time.  Maybe in the corner of their world where you happen to be, a trans activist might want to be incognito. It’s best to leave it up to the trans person as to when and where they care to disclose their trans status, if they care to do so at all.

4.  Match making or un-making
Let’s say that a non-trans person you know has met your trans friend/relative, finds them attractive and would like to get to know them better.  Your first knee-jerk reaction might be to inform the individual about the trans status of your friend/relative, but please consider why you might be having that reaction.

Perhaps you think that the trans person’s body might not be what the other person expects, but unless you have seen the trans person naked, you do not know what their body looks like, and even if you have, how can you know with certainty that the potential suitor won’t find their body appealing?

Or maybe you decide that you will out your trans friend/relative so you can spare them the negative reaction that you’re sure they’ll receive once they disclose their trans status to the interested party.  That’s your own opinion, however.  In other words, what you might consider to be a deal breaker (i.e. someone’s trans status) might not be an issue for another person.  People are rejected in the dating scene for all sorts of reasons and these two potential love birds might not ever make it past the first date for reasons that have nothing to do with the trans status of one of them.

Ultimately, whether a trans person and a non-trans person are a match for each other should be left for them to discover.  Don’t be a match un-maker by disclosing someone’s trans status.

5.  Admirers, chasers and other people attracted to trans folks
In point number 4 above, I talk about people who might become attracted to a trans person they have just met but are unaware of their trans status.  For the issue I discuss here, I refer to certain people, non-trans men and women, who have a significant attraction to trans people in general.  Sometimes these individuals can be easily spotted vying for the attention of (or maybe even harassing or groping) trans people at transgender conferences or at public community functions, and some of them post ads on Craigslist looking for sexual hook ups and/or dates with trans men and women.

These particular folks might be classified as “chasers” or “admirers.”  While some of them objectify, sexualize and fetishize trans people, some do not.  Personally, I sometimes find it hard to tell the difference.  (Matt Kailey has written a couple of posts about people with trans attractions and the fine line between preference versus fetish, where trans people can be either sexualized or considered sexy.)

And so if someone tells you that they are attracted to trans people and/or would like to meet a trans person for dating and/or sex, the proper response would not be to tell them about any trans people whom you might know personally.  Some trans people don’t want anything to do with a person who has trans attractions, whether that individual happens to be an admirer/chaser or not.  If you feel that you must do anything at all, it’s best to ask the trans person(s) you know whether they would be interested in being introduced to such a person.

6. When trans people don’t look male or female “enough” (to you)
If you know a transitioning trans person, the sex they were assigned at birth might be imprinted in your mind, especially if you’ve known them since an early point in their process or before they started transitioning.  Consequently, you might not have really noticed their slow physical transformation and/or you might think that despite their physical changes, they don’t really look like their true gender.  And so when you introduce the trans person to others, you might think that you have to out them as trans as a way to provide an explanation for their androgynous or gender-variant appearance.  You might think that outing them would be helpful, so people don’t get confused.

However, you’re making an assumption that everyone else sees the trans person the same way that you do and you might be wrong.  You might actually create confusion if  you out the trans person to people who already see the trans person as their true self.

And even if someone is confused about a trans person’s gender, so what?  A person’s confusion should not supersede a trans person’s privacy.  Personally, I can’t imagine an individual suffering harm from their confusion over the appearance of someone else, but outing a trans person can be harmful to them, so let the confused person muddle through. More than likely they’ll manage just fine.

7.  Because being trans is not necessarily who we are
Many trans people simply see themselves as men and women.  Being trans is not who they are – being a man or a woman is who they are.  The trans piece is a medical condition and not a definition of them as a person, so they shouldn’t be identified by it.

8.  Education, enlightenment, diversity training and the “poster child excuse”
Very early in my process a (former) friend of mine outed me to her college-aged children without my permission and then tried to justify it by making me the poster boy for her kids’ diversity training.  Since then, I have been surprised at the number of people who have wanted to do the same after I have come out to them (but at least they asked me first).

So if you have an urge to teach someone about diversity and you want to enlighten and educate them in order to help them be a better citizen and a more accepting human being, and to do it, you are going to tell them all about the trans person you know, stifle that thought.  Unless you have asked the trans person involved whether they would mind being the subject of someone’s education on humanity, it would be best to leave the trans person out of the lesson.

9.  It doesn’t matter that a trans person is out to some people
A trans person you know might seem to be out to a lot of people, and that might lead you topresume that they don’t mind being out as trans, and so that might let you assume that it would be okay to disclose their trans status to someone else, but as with other assumptions, it’s best not to make this one because you might be wrong.

10.  Outing a trans person to another trans person
On the surface, it might seem okay to tell one trans person about another trans person you know, but that would be another assumption that might be incorrect.  Each trans person should be asked whether they wish to be a subject of discussion between you and another trans person or whether they want to be introduced to the other as trans.  Believe it or not, some trans folks don’t even want other trans folks to know that they’re trans.

11.  Outing a trans person sets them up for discrimination
I don’t think that I have to convince anyone reading this blog about the existence of rampant discrimination against trans people in jobs, housing, education, health care, social services, etc.  It stands to reason, then, that outing a trans person can set them up for discrimination.  I can think of several trans men I know who lost their jobs when their trans status was revealed to the wrong people.  Once you release that information, you lose control of it and you can’t track where it goes, which might be to someone who can discriminate against the outed trans person.  Keeping their personal information safe and discreet helps the trans people you know avoid becoming the victims of discrimination.

12.  Outing a trans person can erase who they are in the eyes of others
If you disclose a trans person’s status, you can render them invisible.  It’s like magic.  One minute, the trans person is no different than any other man or woman, then they’re outed and poof, in the minds of some people, they’re immediately transformed into the gender they were assigned as birth, or they may be seen as a non-person or a fake person or someone who’s trying to fool everyone around them.  The trans person’s true self disappears and they become, in the eyes of others, someone who doesn’t even really exist.  Speaking from experience, that feels like crap.  Please don’t put people in that position by outing them as trans.

13.  Disclosing the birth names of trans people
This point is a bit different from the others because it’s about outing one thing about a trans person, but it fits into the topic of disclosure. I have decided to add it here because a number of non-trans people over the past few years have nonchalantly disclosed to me the birth names of other trans people that they know.

What they likely did not realize was that some trans people fiercely guard the name they were given at birth and would consider its disclosure to be embarrassing, hurtful and/or offensive.  For some trans folks, their birth name represents a person who they are not and a period of their life they would like to leave behind them.

All that aside, what is the point of revealing a trans person’s birth name anyway?  A trans person’s real name is the one they have chosen that matches their gender and true self and that’s the only name that people need to know.

Therefore, unless a trans person has specifically and directly asked you to please disperse their birth name about with wild abandon, the polite and respectful thing to do would be to keep it to yourself if you happen to know it.

14.  Whose business is it anyway?
Ultimately, the bottom line is that a person’s trans status is their personal information,their history, their story, their life, and it’s not anyone else’s place to disclose it.

The only instances I can think of when it would be okay to out someone as trans would be if the trans person specifically requested it, say, for example, during their coming out process and they asked a trusted friend or relative to help inform people, or if they were involved in some sort of medical emergency and couldn’t speak for themselves, and for the latter I’d still be hesitant.

And with that, we come to the end of 14 reasons why outing a trans person is not okay.  I hope that this little public service announcement has helped to shed some light on this topic for readers who previously might not have realized these issues.  Some readers might disagree with some of my points or might have points of their own to add. I invite everyone to join the discussion.

The post gave this link as the original source: http://americantransman.com/2012/04/18/14-reasons-why-its-not-okay-to-out-someone-as-trans-a-public-service-announcement-from-your-friendly-neighborhood-trans-person/

Found an interesting post on Tumblr, and am sharing it with you all

First, my commentary:

When it comes to the topic of trans women, there's a certain flavor of feminist that just goes apeshit. They only see us as "men who are raping women, women's space, and women's culture." They are often known as radical feminists (or radfems), and I've heard them called feminazis (yes, the term was taken from Rush Limbaugh, and in this case, it's quite applicable), and one person has referred to them as "Zardoz feminists." (It's a reference to a really bad movie called Zardoz, where society is split, with one side screaming "The penis is the source of all evil!") They embrace misogyny against trans women like a warm blanket on a cold winter's night, and, in many cases, consider themselves completely justified in doing whatever they feel like to trans women. (Case in point, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, where trans women have been *EXPLICITLY* told they aren't welcome, to the point where if a trans woman mentions going, their personal information is placed on a small legion of websites without consent, outing the women in question and inviting attack.)

Take a look at the following, and see if the circular logic (or overall lack of logic) doesn't give you a brain-melting headache:

Here’s (a bit of) how transmisogyny works:

Present as a feminine woman: “You’re reifying gender stereotypes and making a sick parody of women! Stop raping our identities and supporting patriarchy!”

Present as a masculine or androgynous woman: (actual comment left on my YouTube channel today by a radfem) “How have you ‘transitioned’?!”

When attacked by radfems, respond with anger: “You’re being an aggressive MAN! I feel threatened! You rapey patriarchal MAN!”

When attacked by radfems, respond with a well-worded, calm answer: “You’re delusional! Nothing you say makes sense! You PUSSY.”

Attempt to access women’s spaces: “Why can’t you understand our need for our own private spaces?! Go make your own spaces and leave us women-born-women alone!”

Attempt to make trans-only women’s spaces: “Why won’t you allow us in there?! You must be plotting how to rape women in there! How dare you say that we can’t access your space!”

Identify as queer or lesbian: “You are raping our identities! YOU MAN! Go date each other, and stop trying to date us!”

Identify as only wanting to date trans people: (actual comment left on my YouTube channel today by a radfem) “You are a bi, woman-hating, lesbian-hating man.”

There is no way to win in the logic of radfems.

All ways lead to the inevitable and nonsensical accusation of being a delusional rapist simply by existing. That’s the game they’ve set up, and they’ve built it so that it can only possibly work that way. Everything they say is laid out so that you cannot respond to it without playing into their game. And if you don’t respond, they attempt to bait you into responding by publicly attacking you, attempting to fill the Google results for your name with hate, and will even go so far as to personally email you links to their hate websites in an attempt to make sure that you read every horrible piece of misgendering and defamation that they’ve written about you. They want your attention. The solution is to give them none (or as little as possible).

Hey guys!

Ok, I've been a bad girl again, leaving this poor blog alone. Here's updates on what's been happening.

Work: Nonexistent. I lost my job about a week ago. It's bittersweet, because, while I like having income, I couldn't stand the place. Insults and bullhonkey abounded. Things are covered until I find a new job, which hopefully will come quickly. And, during the search, I've been kinda housewife-y and doing cleanup. I've also got a project or two that I'm starting work on that will hopefully get some money coming in, so I can stay on my own schedule. *crosses her fingers*

Social: I've attended a munch and a play party for a local Daytime Kinksters group, for people who can't meet at night when those types of things usually are. (As I no longer have overnight job, I'm hoping to get out more.) The play party was nifty, because I got to get flogged again. 40 minutes sure didn't feel like 40 minutes, and I had the niftiest endorphin high afterward. This coming weekend is a) Marscon, and b) my birthday. I'm kind of excited about the con, as it's the first one I'll be going to all on my own. It's smaller than the ones I've been to before, but that's ok. My birthday is Sunday, and I'm turning 31. eh.

Spirituality: I've been leaning towards pagan type stuff. It's rather surprising how it's core message sounds rather similar to Christianity. There's a nifty lodge/coven group that I've been visiting and they've been really awesome. In addition to going to the lodge, I've been doing bits of study in 2 books: The Urban Primitive by Raven Kaldera and True Magick by Amber K. Both interesting books so far, and are giving me things to think about.

Other: Name change was a go! I'm now legally Samantha Alexis Katra B. Social Security Card is go! MN Drivers' license is go! Not only that, but someone actually put the correct gender marker for me! *squee* Also, I've finally gotten a therapist again! We had our first meeting last Tuesday, and it will be a weekly thing. *crosses her fingers for good things to come of it*

That's about it for things right now.

Reposting a tumblr blog about socialization of trans people (specifically women)

This is a blog some of my friends linked to via twitter. I found it a few days ago, and have been thinking on it since. There are things I really like and things I don't like, so I'm going to write about them up front, since they are things that are likely to be found in any discussion of gender theory. I'll assume most of my readers are familiar with some of the basic premises of the discussion (gender identity as opposed to biological sex, the variations on chromosomal sex, etc)

1. "Cis": For those who may not be familiar with the term, it's used to refer to people who's gender identity matches that of their biological sex, as opposed to "trans." Not everyone approves of having this label applied to them, but, logically, if there are people labelled "trans," then there *MUST* be a label for those who are "not trans." Otherwise, you end up subtly implying that people who are trans are different, and, inevitably, lesser. It may not be intentional or even conscious, and the effects may not be immediate, but if you label a group you aren't a part of without applying one to yourself, then eventually, that other-ing will naturally turn into demonizing and attacking that other group. It's a part of who we are as a species, no matter what culture you are from. I try not to apply labels to individuals who don't want them, but labels for groups make things easier for everyone involved.

2. "CAMAB/CAFAB":  means "Coercively Assigned Male/Female At Birth." It's often used as a way to further separate oneself from the gender assignment based on your primary sexual characteristics seen at birth. (Or, in the case of people who were born intersexed, the gender that the parents/attending physician decide for the child, which often happens and is immediately followed by some form of surgery to "make" the infant the sex they want it to be.) Personally, I don't mind the label in general, except for the automatic assumption of coersion. To me, that implies a malevolent intent that I just don't believe is present at every child's birth. I highly doubt there is some secret cabal of doctors who are sitting at a round table in a dark, smoky room, plotting how to ruin the lives of every person born by not assuming they will turn out to be trans. I tend to think that, until the child says otherwise, the adults involved simply assume that the child will be cis. It's a safe assumption, as long as you don't try to hold it when the child says otherwise.

Ok. Up to this point has been my own words. Now for the blog post:



Trans Socialization


Gonna be another one of my rants~ so we’ll see where this goes. Also note that this is all my personal experience, and if it’s similar to yours that’s great, but if not then that’s okay too.
Basically I’ve noticed how a bunch of people want to say CAMAB trans people have experienced male socialization and CAFAB trans people have experienced female socialization.
Usually when I see this it’s when cis people say how they can’t feel safe around CAMAB trans people due to our apparent male socialization. Most commonly with trans women in an effort to find some rational for keeping trans women out of women spaces. I’ll also see this same thing used as justification for trans men to be in women’s spaces because of their apparent female socialization and ‘shared girlhood’.
Now if you’re a CAMAB trans person who feels they have had male socialization that’s fine (same with CAFAB trans people vice versa). But I really don’t like this trend of implying that all trans people experience socialization in the same way.
So now to get to the meat of this post, I’ll be talking about how I personally view my own socialization.
As a trans woman looking at any part of my socialization as ‘male’ seems bizarre and completely wrong to me. I’m female so my socialization was female. However I also don’t buy into the whole ‘shared girlhood’ nonsense since everyone is raised so differently and in so many different circumstances.
Growing up I feel everyone is bombarded with different social expectations but whether or not we actually internalize any of that depends on our own personal identities. I saw things directed at girls and women and internalized what I felt should be directed at me. The thing about my socialization though is that I feel waaaaay too many people look at socialization through entirely a cis point of view.
Imagine from a trans point of view how conflicted a little girl would be when she’s told by society that she needs to be feminine, she needs to like ‘girly’ stuff, she needs to be softspoken, etc, etc. And internalizing all that. But then having the people around you telling you that you need to be more assertive, that you can’t be feminine, that we’ll hurt you with physical violence if you are any of those ‘girly’ things. And just not getting that at all.
My socialization was a society telling me how girls and women should act but then also threatening me with violence if I did so. And this isn’t male socialization at all. This is something completely different from male socialization. This is how I was socialized as a young trans girl.
I hate that we have to talk about our socialization in cis terms. I had female socialization because I’m female. But my experiences, and my continuing experiences are not the same as a cis woman’s. Much like how any marginalized (insert adjective - trans, neuroatypical, queer, fat, etc ) woman’s experiences are not the same as a skinny, hetero, cis, white woman’s experiences. And yet we hold that as some sort of standard to measure all others. What the hell.
Let’s stop buying into this cis narrative that we have to measure our worth and our experiences by what they’ve been through.
So yeah. I definitely had female socialization. But I also had trans socialization. And queer socialization. And a huge number of other internalized socialization all intersecting with each other and making my experiences my own.
The one thing I can say I didn’t have was male socialization.
—-ahhh this was really quickly written so bare with my rantings and lack of proof reading~ Feel free to comment or reblog, but again note that this is just how I view my own experiences and how I feel cis people are pushing their narratives onto trans people.