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The runes say to keep journeying forward.

I am terrified.  K an I were talking the other day about a conversation she'd had with a good guy friend of hers the other day about the prevalence of violence in our society, and about how the threat of it is not absent from the lives of men, but that rather than the constant fear of rape, men live with the fear of getting caught in a physical fight that they cannot escape/win.

The conversation she had had was about being physically large and/or intimidating or imposing being something which prevents these fights from starting in the first place, and which, for some women, can be something which prevents sexual assaults, or at least offers a degree of seeming freedom from fear. 

Feeling like one can handle onesself in a fight or altercation offers a degree of protection.

As I enter into the beginning of this, it feels scary to be swapping one set of fears for another.  To go from being a strong woman, to a vulnerable guy.

I'm having a hrd time letting go of the girl. the "pretty face" - so long the only thing about my physicality that anyone was willing to validate - and I'm wondering if there's going to be anything left that anyone will want...

I'm used to being a pair of tits, a hole, a pretty face, a servant, a masochist. -used to trading on the body and the bits for the things I need - respect, honour, love, care, affection, a sense of place and belonging. 

I want a place to belong that has nothing to do with my flesh.

I am tired of waiting on others to tell me when I am finally good enough. Tired of hoping to pass the test enough times, to pass enough times, to finally look good enough,  or fit in enough, or somehow convince others, adn through them, myself that I deserve to be here - wherever that is at any given time.

I have passed as a girl a lot. For the family business, I spent some years as a "nice girl". Coming up north to do a teaching degree, I again passed as "teacher" - long hair, plain makeup, then got a more radical haircut for the Master's degree, but I cant do it.  I don't want to be a woman - never did - I could cope with being a girl, grrl was better, but woman was never something I aspired to or wanted to grow up into. 

 I would have told you that I was ok with being a girl, but that I want to grow up to be something else...

 

Do we ever know

For the first time in a long time, I am teetering on the edge of a cliff, and it is scary, but not for once in a bad way.  I'm not worried about my family disowning me. I think they won't. Not anymore. They did that once, and we've grown together, and are beyond doing it a second time, although it might come as a shock.  I've recently reconnected with my sister, and she might not be ok with this, that thought is scary, but scary-sad, not scary-terrifying.

I am used to standing on the edge of the abyss feeling like I want to throw myself in. I am used to struggling with feeling suicidal, a lot.  I didn't realize how much, until I suddenly don't feel suicidal anymore.

I remember figuring out I was queer, feeling terrified that someone might know - telling the first person that I 'might' be - the relief, the joy, the satisfaction at finally having words for all of me.  I never imagined feeling so tongue tied again.

I don't really have any always statements, I've been around a long time, and have used most of my non-gender-conforming stories to prove my queerness, or my dykeness, or something else already...
...I used to wear men's clothes as a teenager; spent most of my adolescence dreaming androgyny like most 80s punk/mod aspiring fatties (but the boobs got in the way); I did 80's preppie christian drag, which was pretty asexual, and then quickly went to a school with a uniform before having to form any more fashion sense; I had an epistolary romance with a girl in my grade 5 class, where I pretended to be Boy George's Jr., and she herself, until we got caught, etc...

Where it got confusing was the imagining of 'junk.'  I don't hate mine, it works fine, but I'd prefer the other.  It was the imagining of sex roles that confused the fuck out of me - see, I imagined myself on the bottom, like every good girl; except, I thought, with a woman on Top... but then I tried a man on Top, and that was hot too, and butch women are hella hot... and then, well, me with a cock, being validated as a boy with a butch woman on Top is pretty much heaven, and that's when my brain fell apart.

Because my cock not a sex toy, in fact it's not a toy at all.  And then the boy energy didn't leave...
Other people started seeing it, and validating it which was scary - no, I thought, I'm a grrl... and then I thought about it some more, and all of the carefully constructed walls started to crumble.

Here's the heresy - I don't hate my cunt. It works well, and it has given me a lot of pleasure over the years, but all of the language I use to refer to my sexual desire is generally penis-based... "I have a hard-on for x", "jerking off" etc.

I understand that for a lover of women the ability to make someone "wet" is a signifier of their prowess, and that regarding my physiology, it's a sign of how hot I am for them, but applied to me, it sounds wrong, and has the power to ruin sex if I don't re-code "wet" into "hard" or "hot" or some other gender neutral or cock-related language.

I'm scared to be a boy because I'm not the right kind of boy. I'm girly. I like pink, and shiny things, and sparkles, and glitter, and probably still even heels.

I'm scared of losing my chosen family, even though they're the most awesome people in the world, and I can't imagine them deciding not to love me anymore over this.

I'm scared of losing the woman I'm finally letting myself fall in love with... because she sees me, and I'm not awful to her, but I'm not exactly what she thought she wanted either.

I'm scared of losing my femme bf-bf.  If I'm a boy, then what happens?

I'm scared. 

I haven't felt scared of how people will react to me being me in a long time. 
I remember this.

Art

I have started doing art again. It is a good thing, even if it a slow process. There are a million ideas in my head, and I have been dreamin art for months, but it is only just now that I am starting to put things out of my head. Nothing spectacular so far, but it is good to be working again. Soldering links, wood burning, etc.

Spring Cleaning

This past year I've been seeing little glimpses of the road not travelled in my life, and there's parts of that I'm sorry about, and parts of it I'm really not so sorry about. 

I think I like my life. 

Amazing what remaking part of your living room can do. 

I found some good books in the cleaning:
Two on brain recovery and brain training that I'm going to send to K's Mom.

One for K:
'When you are the partner of a Rape or Incest Survivor'
about living with a partner who has PTSD, and the process of dealing with someone coping with it - I'm not kidding when I'm telling her I'm doing really well.  I'm in the second year of dealing with this stuff, and it's going well - tough, painful, hard, but well.

Two for me to read:
'The High Conflict Couple'
'Lesbian Relationships' - yeah I know, we don't all identify as that, but it's a good book

I've been watching Brené Brown's TED talks on vulnerability and shame and they're clearly heavily condensed versions of her academic work, but not only do I want to read her academic writing, I feel deep respect for her willingness to talk about her personal experiences.  It is, as she says, brave.

So,  I have marking to do, essays to write, readings to do, and space to do it in.

Dave Lizewski: How do I get a hold of you?
Hit Girl: [sarcastically] You just contact the mayor's office. He has a special signal he shines in the sky; it's in the shape of a giant cock.

So, feminism.

I'm teaching about masculinity this week, and the ways in which our culture enforces masculinity on boys and men, and the militarized masculinity which is sold in our culture as the domain of "the real man" and it's interesting, because in some ways it's a culture which we all idealize - women and men both.

I love violent movies - action movies in particular, adore knife fights, and well choreographed sword and gunplay.

I like MMA, although I am less certain that I like UFC, the participants of which are often engaged in homophobic, misogynist taunting, and the organization of which is engaged in a lot of "women as sexual object" entertainment policies. The problem is, that there is a lot of it which _is_ entertaining.

Boobies are pretty nice to look at, and hot girls in skimpy outfits are pleasing to the eye - do they always have to have post modern self-reflexivity to make that ok?

Ought it to be one's pre(pro)scribed role? no. Combined with violent testing of one's fighting prowess against another? is that necessarily bad?