Thursday, March 24, 2011

Time for something infammatory?

I'm thinking about going to Michigan.  Thus a post about gender and sex yet again.  A recent note, about transphobia and being female-assigned-at-birth (FAAB) made me think, and I guess that I'm onto that thought process again.

So, there are necessary spaces for transwomen to be together, and to share their unique experiences. Then there are women/womyn/womon's spaces in which ALL womyn-identified people should be welcome.  Then there are women and trans events, which honour the FAAB history of many members of the community, while specifically excluding MAAB-still-male-identifying people.  I think it's important to include those folks who ID as genderqueer, and, frankly, those are often my partners, so it matters to me, but I know others who feel strongly that that's not right either.

For me, in that list, the space that's missing, though, is a FAAB-still-female-identifying space.  I'm not saying that's "women's space", but there's a unique experience to be found in having grown up as female, and having lived my life as female, and sometimes I want to share time with others who have chosen that same path. 

It's not "the right path".  It doesn't make me a "real woman".  It's more like I might like to spend time in the company of other femmes, or geeks, or other abuse survivors, or other Estonians, or anything else that makes up a part of who I am.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Personal blather

K was here for the weekend.  It was so nice to have her here.  I had a hard time with it.  I don't handle sadness very well, and pain, and I've been walling myself off because it's hard being at a distance, and loving people who are all far away.  I have to remember to try to keep my heart open.  It's so hard.  Now I have a great big project to do, and then a bunch of housecleaning and crafts before I start teaching kindergarten monkeys next week.

Thursday, March 10, 2011


I have been having trouble with some of the frustrating aspects of what I have been doing in school.  Some of it has been regarding the methods of presentation, some of it has been regarding the actual material being presented, and some of it has been with the limitations of the program, and with the need to regurgitate specific information rather than to formulate ideas, and do real thinking. 
I am a synthesist, and a global learner, and do my best learning by seeing things in  a larger context.  I prefer to view things in context, and would prefer to be able to consider all aspects of something before having to present a final conclusion.  I understand that often one way of looking at something may be enough to develop a functional approach to a problem, but more than one view can help to develop a multi-faceted view, and multiple views, while complicating things, can also allow for divergent patterns to come to light. 

I have been feeling very frustrated lately, and as a result, not being particularly impressed with aspects of the program, and not engaging with it very well.  Opportunities to explore things of interest to me have seemed few and far between, and with my very limited energy levels, and dealing with constant pain it is frustrating to have to choose between things of interest to me, and rote memorization of things for tests.  

I understand that having students do presentations is beneficial to us, as students, however, having us learn key concepts from these presentations seems irresponsible at best.  I have paid money to come to take courses from expert professors, and to pay to sit in a class while someone presents information from google or wikipedia is just frustrating.  Not a single ERIC reference, not a single journal article, not one piece of research, or data whatsoever to back up any of the information presented, so that if I wanted to look into the subject further there was a springboard for that.  This is what I find frustrating. 
Maybe I am too much of an academic for this professional course.  Maybe I don't grasp the concept of what we are supposed to be doing here.  I got in trouble for including graphic organisers in a project, because I felt that it gave a better understanding of my analysis to break it down into criteria, and to map it out. 
I have found myself reading through things for tests, and then flying off onto tangents, where I come across something fascinating, and wonderful, which captures my interest, drives me to distraction with my sudden need to know more, and takes me on a mad three hour search through journal archives in a furious tumult of needing to know statistics and details, only to realize that it is not going to help me on this essay or exam, and that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the task at hand.

Some questions I posed to myself recently were: Would it change if I saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate my accumulated learning?  If I saw the course as an opportunity to learn new things, and was happy about having the opportunity to learn?  Regardless of my personal views on the validity of learning these things?

I don’t know if I can be a Polyanna…

Thursday, March 03, 2011

I love House. 

I know it's a stupid TV show, but there is something to be said for a representation of a person who approaches the world with logic, and says the things that we are all thinking, but don't give voice to.

Maybe we aren't all thinking them...

I am, at any rate.

I just wish they didn't have to make him so... tortured.

Some of us 'logical mathematical' types find love even without getting drunk to say so, yanno?
Although, I would believe that many of us worry about it messing up our carefully ordered lives.

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Apostasy

I have been having a lot of conversations lately, again, about atheism.

I really do think the world would be a better place without religions, and without faith.  I understand that ritual is the way that we organize the elements of our lives, and I apreciate that. Rituals mean a lot to me.  I enjoy them, but I also understand that they serve a function.

Ritual
- unites people for shared experience
- provides structure
- orders social interaction
- creates predictability and safety
- orchestrates meaning

Faith is something that provides a feeling of bridging between the known and the abyss.  Without that bridge, one has to stand on the edge of the precipice, and examine "the terror".

There isn't anything to fear about the unknown. We all have a place, and it is as large or as small as the space that we carve out for ourselves.

It would be a lot easier to believe in a pre-ordained plan, truth is, I don't.

It certainly seems that right now humanity isn't in a place to function without faith, but I dream of a time when we will rise above that need.  When we will be able to look at the world AS IT IS and find it beautiful.

That's all.  I don't desire to rip people's comfort's from them, and when I say that I feel like it's too bad that people have't evolved beyond needing faith to feel at peace with their lives and their world, I don't mean any specific people, I would like humanity to evolve to not needing it.  It makes me sad to see people I care about believing in fairy stories. 

I know that I say "things fell into place" or "must be what's supposed to happen" but I know that there's not a real plan for things, I KNOW that there isn't a higher power, and that when I see patterns, it's like seeing dragons in the clouds.

Perhaps there is some kind of cosmic ebb and flow, like tides, maybe we are moved like magnetic shavings.  I have too much on my plate, and not enough science background to read these things right now, but the thoughts amuse me.