Wednesday, June 11, 2008

whats with all the memes I'm doing?

Ryan's starting a gender pride meme, and who am I not to play? ^.^
"You know how the feminists run that “Whats your most attractive feature, and you aren’t allowed to say ‘my X, but OMG this other body part is really ugly?’” Meme?
Well, I want to start a Gender Pride Meme along similar lines. I want to know what people’s favourite thing about being gender diverse is. You aren’t allowed to worry about sounding arrogant, and you aren’t allowed to talk about any negative aspects of gender diversity (after all, we talk those things to death, imo). You don’t have to be trans… this is open to people that are queer, or in any way transgress gender norms.
"
Obviously, everything here is my experiences and, since no one else has the same experiences, I don't expect all trans*/gender diverse folks to feel, learn, and respond to the same things as me

I like how being and accepting myself as trans* has made me so very aware of my body. How I am learning first hand that my body is both incredibly important to who I am and incredibly unimportant. I am learning to truly live and appreciate my body while knowing that it isn't all of me.
I'm walking the line between many extremes and/or switching between; and I like that.
Despite the hassle, I love falling between the lines and being a walking contradiction. It's who and what I am; coming out to myself about being trans* has helped me come out to myself about this too.
(To clarify, I don't fall between the lines of male/female or man/woman; I'm not "best of both worlds". I'm talking about other things than these sorts of ungendering cliches.)

I know myself better than most people my age; better than many people ever know themselves I'd even say. I credit my experiences surrounding being transsexual for this.

I love how I've responded to being trans*.
Working, though slowly sometimes, towards understanding and accepting others. Who knows, if I wasn't trans* I could have ended up very overtly racist like my grandmother and uncle (grandma said I shouldn't spend so much time with my "colored friends" because that was probably scaring white kids away. Uncle says how n*****s are dirtying his neighborhood).
Being trans* and queer and a fem/andro guy has opened my eyes to oppression and activism that I never would have thought had I grown up a white cis*guy.

Growing up assigned-female allowed me to explore gender expressions I would never have been allowed near if I'd been assigned male. I was able to play with legos and dolls, hammers and princess dresses, science kits and EZ bake ovens.
I was given and loved all of them in childhood, and this wouldn't have happened if I wasn't a trans* guy.

I can't explain all of it, but I know I've learned so much in this life from being transsexual. I don't know yet if I'd do it again, but I know I don't regret it.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for responding! :D

I love hearing what other people *like* about being trans or gender diverse, cos we are all different!

Sometimes people make me go 'OH ME TOO!' and it means I have one more thing to be thankful for, that maybe I didn't think of myself.

Drakyn said...

Yeah, I also like reading about other trans* folks' experiences.

And I have a post in the works about monsters, I just need to work on it more and give it some direction. Your monster post has me thinking, just nothing short and concise enough for a comment yet. ^.^;;

Anonymous said...

Monsters are AWESUM!

I'm on a bit of a OMG! TRANS PRIDE! bent at the moment. In a pride frenzy!

I think the oxytocin is rotting my brain... o.O

Drakyn said...

Hehe, I love monsters.

Drakyn said...

Oh yeah, I ordered a doublefront the other night, so I'll have it in a few days. ^.^ Hopefully it'll work well enough where I can shed some layers... Being a trans*guy does remind me of the monsters that have to wear cloaks and layers and whatnot to hide their true forms.

Anonymous said...

Oh, dude! You have to read 'Foundling' by DM Cornish

Its about this kid... a boy with a girls name. He is shorter and slighter than other boys, and when he leaves the 'foundlingry' his friends tell him to wear a bandage around his chest, with a potion on it at all times, so no one can tell he's a monster. ;)
I was like HELLO.
Its a kids book, but so awesome. I LOVED IT.

Drakyn said...

ooo, cool I'll have to look it up. I think I'll actually be writing about the types of literary monsters I like. Which means I'll have to do research though, aka re-read some of my books. ^.^
Have you read Bruce Coville's Odds are Good? Its a great anthology with all sorts of monster and shapeshifter stories.

Anonymous said...

Bruce Coville is now on my MUST HAVE list... :D

I haven't read it. I think you'd like China Mieville too. Predido St Station is AWESOME, but it gave me such nightmares that I can't read any more by that author. It was SO GOOD, but I am a chicken when it comes to horror.

Drakyn said...

I used to love horror...but then watching the Japanese Grudge and having some spiritual experiences have made me too chicken. -.-;

I love Bruce Coville, his Into the land of the Unicorns is great too. And the coming out anthology Am I Blue? is wonderful.
The only place I've seen it is my old middle school library, but Jane Yolen's Here There Be Dragons was absolutely wonderful. That's where my screen name comes from. One of the short stories had the "old language"'s word for dragon as drache. I used drachekyn (dragon's kin) until I shortened it to drakyn.

Can you tell I'm a bookworm? The only reason I'm not entirely broke is because fanfiction is free.

Anonymous said...

Bookworms unite! I've started tracking my reading on aNobii but have decided I should chill out on the buying books for a while. It is an expensive habit! :D

I read Stephanie Meyers vampire books recently. They SUCK ARSE (in a bad way). However, I did get very attached to the werewolf character (who is meant to be a 'bad guy', what with all his *caring* about the protagonist, and hating her abusive vampire boyfriend).
Now I want to be a werewolf when I grow up!

Drakyn said...

I like used bookstores and places like half.com; yay 25 cent books!
And, as I said, fanfiction is free; and if you have the patience you can find some awesome stories. It is also much cheaper to re-read books a few dozen times...I have certain books I read at least once a summer.

Gah, I hate it when I keep reading bad books/stories because I like one character or I just want to see what happens. I did that with Harry Potter (the 4th was the last good one).
And there was some book, called something like Wayfarers Redemption, that was soooo horrible. I found a pi symbol in the middle of a word and the main character falls in love with his...sister or cousin I don't remember (his grandma hits on him too).
I especially hate it when I realize I'm buying them. I actually bought a lot of Ann RIce and a few other authors that are utter crap and now I don' know why I wasted my money. ;.;

Anonymous said...

I have a whole stack of Tamora Pierce and Isobelle Carmody books that I reread *all the time*. The ones that I bought about 8 years ago are starting to look really tatty, and I am considering buying some new editions with pretty covers, and giving away more old ones to other fans.

I love comics/graphic novels too, but they are so expensive, and I churn through them so fast, it makes them seem a little less cost effective. :D

Drakyn said...

I love Tamora Pierce (you know she has an LJ, right? I have her friended...), I sooo wanted Sandry or Daine's powers. And, Briar was one of my first crushes. ^.^;;
Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series is one group of books I constantly re-read; they're going to start falling apart soon.
I rarely buy manga, only a few series and only really good ones (like Petshop of Horrors). I usually read them online or download them; I know it isn't good, but I don't have the money to buy many.

Anonymous said...

I have Tamora's LJ too... she once read my blog and said I was a talented writer. o.O I was so excited. I still like to brag about it. ;)

I never got into manga other than Misfile. I like watching anime though... stuff like Serial Experiments Lain, Haibane Renmei, and Spiral. ^.^

I love stuff like Blankets and The Fun House. Autobiographical graphic novels, and fantasy, like Watchmen etc.

Drakyn said...

I love anime and manga; Code Geas, Lain, Ghost Hunt, Family Compo, Wolf's Rain, Naruto manga, etc.
Graphic novels are good too, but unless I'm at a bookstore or can get them from the library I don't get a chance to read them. I love the Crow though, if I ever have some cash to splurge with i'm getting it.

Do you read fanfiction? I probably read more fanfiction than anything else... Heh, right now I'm reading a Transformers movieverse fic where Sam destroying the allspark basically makes him a hybrid. It'll eventually be Sam/Bumblebee... >.> <.<;

And Tamora Pierce has thanked me for commenting on her journal! She wrote a post about the DSM-V and replied to my comment saying that she was hoping I'd comment. ^.^ It made my day.
She spoke at my high school, when Trickster's Queen came out she visited. It was awesome, I still have the card she signed. I, stupidly, left all of her books at home--I was soo surprised I hadn't brought at least one to my dorm--so she signed one of her business cards for me. ^.^

Anonymous said...

Tammy's SO COOL isn't she?

I had an incident with fan fiction when I was a kid... I got pretty severely punished by my mum for writing it. I kinda avoided it for ages after that.
I read some Obernewtyn Fan Fiction at one point, but thats about it.
Its something I should definitely start reading though. It will save me some money, and a lot of its really good quality.

Drakyn said...

If you ever want some fanfic recommendations you can come here. ^.^
I have, literally, nothing to do most summers as it is impossible to get a summer job at my parents place (rural MI) so reading is pretty much all I do. I mostly read Harry POtter and Naruto, but I do branch out to others like Transformers and LotR every so often.

Why would your mom punish you? My mom just thinks I'm weird for reading it--especially reading it all day/night (why she's surprised I don't know, I've been doing that with just books for years).

Queers United said...

what is "meme"?

Drakyn said...

A meme is something fun and sometimes provocative. For each meme, everyone starts with the same thing (do image searches and post the results for each topic, answer these questions, talk about xyz) but your answer will probably be different than anyone else doing the meme. They circle the internet like quizilla quizzes, but memes are more interesting and fun.