Trans People Are Tired of Holding Your Cissy Hand

    Trans people are constantly asked - demanded - to justify our existence, prove we are natural, prove we really have a right to dress how we want and control our own bodies how we want, prove aren't sick in the head, prove we aren't evil pervert sodomites who want to rape lesbians and diddle kiddies and trick men into sucking dick just because we break gender conventions.
     Most of this hate is focused on trans women; akin to the homophobic ire lashed against gay men that often forgets lesbians exist. For example, when AIDS is brought up as a reason homosexuality is wrong, it is logically inconsistent due to the fact that lesbians have a much lower rate of AIDS than straight women. If higher AIDS rates makes a sexual orientation incorrect in some way, logically women should be lesbians.  This is, of course, just one example of the dysfunctionality of homophobic rationalizations. The anger towards men who break gender boundaries - whether by having "feminine" qualities, by having sex with other men instead of women, or by rejecting their assigned male sex altogether - is generally thought to be generated from misogyny, from the desire to keep women in a lower social status. 
   Men rejecting, or failing to fit in to, the superior male status threatens that system. In the same way that bigots often ignore lesbians, they also often ignore trans men. As a result, activists also often ignore trans men.  Even more ignored by everyone are Non-Binary trans people, who identify as both man and woman, or as neither. There is also such a thing as the existence of intersex people, who are born with ambiguous genitalia that is often mutilated to conform to female or (rarely) male.
  The hateful narratives don't have room for any complexity, compassion, real data, or science. Bigots are not known for their research skills.
  When bigots demand answers from trans people, they don't listen to the answers.  Trans people, allies, human rights groups, and scientists who study transgender have put out tons of information in recent years. Organizations like the APA (http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender.aspx) and the WHO (http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/transgender/en/) have tons of info up on their websites. The scientific consensus supports trans identities and the human rights consensus supports trans rights. History books are starting to include us, there are blogs, there is just tons of information out there where once, very recently, we were virtually invisible. Rational, compassionate, informed people get it. So why don't the bigots? Because they don't want to.
  Every forum and (*shudder) comment section in which bigots are arguing with trans people and our allies is filled with the same misinformation/rationalizations over and over, and the same explanations being ignored, like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving bulldozing over their "libtard" niece with his conservative radio talking points without letting her get a word in. These bigots demand, relentlessly, to be proven wrong, and then when they are proven wrong they don't even follow links or take a moment to consider the rational arguments offered them in favor of equality, because they are too committed to feeling "right" about their original ignorant hate that they insist is neither hate or irrational, even when they are literally threatening trans people with anger-fueled violence (just because we are trans).
  Trans people are sick and tired of holding cis people's hands - even the "nice" ones who *want* to learn - and walking you through who we are. We are sick and tired of begging for simple equality and basic safety.  Even begging you to be quiet and go educate yourself before declaring us inferior in some way really should be beneath both of us. You, cis people, are capable and should be responsible for doing some basic study about us on your own before speaking against us.  I certainly don't speak against, say, the Bible without having properly read it (and talked to many Christians) first. You really should never be criticizing someone when you haven't taken the time to listen to their point of view first; and really listen, really try to understand and feel them.
  Demanding someone *prove* their worth and humanity to you is degrading. It's just another form that bigotry takes. & trans people shouldn't have to deal with that shit all the damn time. Enough is enough. It's 2015, you have an internet connection. Grow up, grow a heart, and educate yourself properly. Stop asking trans people to hold your hand and walk you through why we are equal humans who deserve to be safe.

Abuse & Redemption

One of the chief pieces of advice we tell abuse victims today is that abusers don't change. This is great advice for abuse victims. If someone is abusing you, sticking around in the hopes they will change is a terrible idea.  Of course, it is naive to think that all abuse victims really have the ability to leave - some fear if they leave, they will be murdered or become homeless or leave their children alone with the abuser, and sometimes that can indeed be the consequences, so we should not judge abuse victims who are forced to stay and assume it is always a choice. But generally, if someone is abusing you, and you are able to leave them, you should leave.
However the narrative that abusers do not and can not change is simply not true, and it is harmful to abuse victims, in another way, to cement this narrative so forcefully; people who abuse others are making a choice, a choice that may well be compulsive and difficult to resist, but a choice that can be changed. Many people who abuse do not have the reason and empathy necessary to change - but some abusers CAN CHANGE, and they should be pressured to change, we should expect and insist that abusers take responsibility for their choices and not feel helplessly compelled to hurt others.
I say this based on personal experience. Now, personal (anecedotal) experience is not in any way scientifically valid for several reasons; one, becausre there are billions of humans and my personal experience involves just two of those humans, which is a pathetically small sample size; two, because my personal experience is obviously heavily biased. So you shouldn't take it as Gospel (well that's an ironic phrase, given the Gospels are made up), and I'm not offering it up as such; it is simply my own limited personal experience which has caused me to question the absolutism of condemning abusers as monsters.

I grew up with abusive parents. The abuse didn't fully start, to my recollection, until I was around 11 years old. At this time, my mother lost her damn mind and I became a target, an outlet of her inner turmoil. The abuse ranged from private interrogations in which she would accuse me of thinking terrible things about her that I did not think, that were in fact her own worse fears, to hitting and smothering me. There were times where I feared for, and was in danger of, my life - smothering someone can, after all, kill them, and this was a frequent tactic of hers. In her mind, I think she thought I was out of control and she was calming me down, but in reality, she was losing her temper and physically attacking me, I was resisting, and then she would smother me to feel she had gained total control over me.  By gaining control of me, she could feel she was gaining control over her own life - after all, she had given over her life to Motherhood at a young age, so if she could control her children, she could feel in control of her life. 

However, this did not solve her problem, because her real problem was her own out of control irrational emotions and thoughts. She was filled with high levels of anxiety and anger, and in her mind this became self hate, hatred towards others, fear, and paranoia. 

She lashed out at her husband as well.  I bore the brunt of the abuse - in fact, when I would hear her getting angry at my younger siblings (I am going to be vague about myself on this blog precisely because stories like this are private - as you can tell from the introduction, there has been some reconcillation in my family for one thing, and I do not wish this to be traced back to my true identity, in part because I fear internet harassers like those who attacked Anita & Zoe as I mentioned on two previous posts) - when I heard her attacking my younger siblings, I would run into their room to deliberately put my own body in the way of the abuse and force her to re-focus her anger on me.  She treated my siblings differently, and until recently, some siblings denied the abuse altogether, while others had different experiences with it.

My father was also abusive, allowing himself to lose his temper and screaming mean things at people or hitting them.

The physical aspect, aside from the terrifying and dangerous smothering, was never the worse part. As a young teen who desperately needed my parents to prioritize love for me in their lives, the worst thing was feeling like my parents hated me. I became bulimic and self-injured by age 14.  It was at this time - a few years later, actually -that I first saw that my mother was not really entirely a monster, because it was at this time that my mother first saw the monster she had become for what it was.  When she saw the scars and fresh wounds on my body, she finally stopped seeing me as if I were her enemy and started seeing me as the child in pain that I was.  

No one should injure themselves; at worst it can kill you, at best it is a terrible thing to do to yourself. It hurt me in many ways and I still carry the scars with me.  However just as the narrative that abusers can't change is a good thing to say to people but not necessarily true, saying that self-injury can get you attention and help is a terrible thing for people vulnerable to that self-destructive compulsion to hear but it is actually the truth, and it is one reason why people self-injure.  Not that I wanted people to know I did it - I hid it for years, terrified people would know I was fucking crazy. but I am sure a part of me also did it because no one would recognize my emotional pain, the self-hate that I had been taught, the real fear for my life that I lived with, the fear most abusive victims feel that someday their abusers will seriously injure or kill them, the fear that I would commit suicide due to my misery and self hatred. 

People often don't recognize emotional injury as a real problem or a real danger. People like to pretend our emtions arent real or dont matter.  But that isn't reality; our emotional lives in most ways ARE our life, our quality of life, and if you are miserable in your life, it is a real pain that makes your life genuinely difficult to endure.  For me, the worst part of my abuse was how it made me feel about myself. I hurt myself because I turned my anger at my abusers inward. I was angry at myself for doing and saying the things that would cause them to be angry at me. All I wanted was for my parents to love me.

So when my parents found out that I hurt myself like that, they put me in therapy, and they started really looking at their own behavior and trying to change it.

The abuse did not stop altogether. The abusive behaviors still have not completely stopped. My parents still have that terrible combination of selfish choices and mental illness that cause them to fight with other people and be mean to loved ones for really bad reasons.

But my parents are not monsters.  They behaved as monsters for a time, and sometimes they still do. But they are people, complex people capable of empathy and capable of change.

My mother fought herself from that moment on, she started trying to force herself to become a bettter person. The monster fought back. Sometimes the mother won, sometimes the monster won. And gradually, over time, with medication and therapy and a lot of hard work, the monster started to weaken.

It took time, and it went back and forth in phases, and she will never be fully cured. I expect someday when she is old and her mind starts to go that it could come back again. But I do not hate her. She is still in my life. Because she fought for me. I forgave her, for no other reason than that she made it clear to me over and over again that she did not want to be a monster anymore, that she was truly remorseful, and she put that emotion into action in her life and maintains vigilance over herself.

At 18, I left my mother's house (almost) for good - she kept hitting me, and I kept getting up, refusing to fight back, and then I left. I barely spoke to her for many years. This was one of the best things I did for myself and for her.  If you are abused, and reading this, and hoping that your abuser can change too, first know that you should not expect that to happen and what you should do is get out as soon as you can and don't look back.  The best thing you can do for yourself, and for your abuser, is to walk out and lock the door behind you.  Not that your abuser deserves anything from you, but the only way they will learn to stop abusing you is if they truly lose you, especially lose control over you. They need to know that trying to control others is not going to help them control their own out of control emotions and thoughts. They need to understand that people have a right to their own lives and are not tools for the abuser to use. They need to see that when you hurt people like that, you will lose them forever.

Unfortunately, this was not the last time I would be under my mother's control.  In my late 20s, I was at risk of homelessness. With few options, I returned to my parent's house.

But this time, things were different.  I would have slept under a bridge first if I didn't feel they would be different. Which is not to say things were perfect. There were still fights. My parents still do not know how to control their anger. But the anger now is limited to real problems, not imaginary ones, and there are now limits and accountability where before there were no holds barred.  There is also a lot of love and support where before there was primarily abuse. We are all adults, and what happens is not abuse, it is fighting - which isn't great, but there is a difference between an adult raising her voice to another to say "I am mad and this is why" and an adult telling a child that the child is worthless, or smothering the child.  If you seperated their behavior today from the past, you would not call it an abusive relationship, you would just say they had bad tempers and could be assholes sometimes; and in all honestly, after enduring that terrible dynamic, I could now be the shit-starter and finisher myself, and there were times when I imitated the abuse towards them and they took it. I'm deeply ashamed of that, and did my best to control it and get my shit together, and it has never played out with anyone else, but the truth is that when you grow up in an abusive dynamic like that one thing that can happen is that you can learn to imitate that behavior. The point is, even at my worst, my parents now showed a new restraint. They learned and changed, something I once thought impossible. 

I have learned and changed as well. I am stronger now, I am peaceful, I control my anger and keep my mental health under control with treatment.

I still need boundaries with my parents, and none of us are perfect or ever will be, but we can now really spend time together in a loving way. I have forgiven them for the past because they have truly shown remorse and self-improvement. I have my parents back and my family now feels like a normal, loving, fun family. That is precious to me. While I would never tell an abuse victim to hold out for that hope, the reality is that redemption and forgiveness can happen, and did in my life, and I am happy to have my parents back. & I only have that because they truly made the choice to change and put the hard work in. We can and should demand that from anyone with a history of abusing others, because it is their duty and within their power. I am grateful to my parents for being the rare ones to do what they needed to do to be better people, and help me be a better person.

Sure, Harassment is Bad, but Anita Sarkeesian is an Evil Sith Cunt-Lord Who Must Die!

'Just like in real life, women online often face a disproportionate amount of violent, often sexualized anger from men just for being women, particularly for being women with rational opinions like "women should be treated equally". This harassment has gotten so out of control that the mainstream media is starting to take notice. And just like the bigots of today always do, the HaterGate mob is flooding the comments of videos and articles to say that they do not personally support harassment, but harassment isn't really a problem, and also that bitch had it coming. Almost every video or article about harassment has comments from men attacking one woman in particular; Anita Sarkeesian. She has been threatened with death, driven from her home after her address was published online with a death threat, threatened with rape countless times, with multiple images of violence against her, even a "game" where haters punch her face.

& what horrible thing did Anita do to merit all this hate? 

She made a few YouTube videos on her channel, Feminist Frequency

Yea that's it.

Here are some of the truly terrible things she has said that deserve death:

"Objectification and sexual violence are neither normal or inevitable. We do not have to accept them as some sort of necessary cultural backdrop in our media...the patriarchy has not existed throughout all time...in all cultures...it can be changed...when we see fictional universes challenging or even transcending systemic gender oppression, it subverts the dominant paragdym within our collective consciousness, and helps make a more just society feel possible, tangible, and within reach." - "Women as Background Decoration Part 2: Tropes vs. Women in Video Games"

"We are asking for games to acknowledge that [women] exist and we love games... We've been playing games our whole lives."

"Do you believe that women should have equal rights to men and that we should fight for those rights? - Great, then you're a feminist." - Colbert Report

"Stop using violence against women as a way to further the storyline of a male hero, and start writing us as full and complete human beings. Okay?" - Women in Refrigerators vid (a response to a female comic book writer, Gail Simone's, similar observations).

"[women are] full and complete human beings with our own troubles, interests, and creative endeavors" - Manic Pixie Dream Girls Trope vid

"Instead of believing that [female] sexuality is something to be explored and celebrated, we are repeatedly told that our only form of social power." - "The Evil Demon Seductress

Ooooh, the horror! 

Clearly this vile harpy is LYING, because sexism in media can't possibly exist, right fellas?! It's not as if women are over half the population but roughly 12% of leading roles on film (I mean, unless you count actual data and facts, but that logic shit is for feminazis). clearly the only possible way to respond to a woman saying such terrible things as "I think things are not equal and I would like them to be equal" is to make her fear for her life and talk about how you want to violently rape her, right guys?!

Or you could just, you know, ...not watch her videos. maybe create a response. Maybe even listen to her and treat women like equal humans. 

Links:

http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research.html

http://feministfrequency.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/technology/gamergate-women-video-game-threats-anita-sarkeesian.html?_r=0

http://lby3.com/wir/ - Women in Refridgerators 

Zoe Quinn is Not Your Property

A lot has been written, from the New York Times to Cracked, on the hate mob known as GamerGate. I was personally harassed by them, in a particularly transphobic, racist, and rape-culture-embracing manner myself, and no I do not need to offer "proofs" of this, the proof of HaterGate harassment is all a matter of public record that is easily accessible and blatantly obviously. What I want to talk about lies at the heart of the cornerstone of HaterGate and other such anti-woman hate mobs, the desire of men to control women.

Zoe Quinn - the "patient zero" who was the first victim of this injustice, a really awesomely brave woman - Zoe's relationship was her private business, as any woman's romantic and sexual life is. Women have every right to control their own bodies however they please, because a woman's body belongs to that woman and to her alone, her life is hers to live and no one else's to own or control. Her stalker ex-boyfriend couldn't handle that idea, and found a bunch of men who also couldn't handle it to help him try to regain control of her through harassment, using the Internet as their tool and conducting all their business very publicly. What he did is well documented, and no amount of HaterGate lies can erase all that evidence, Quinn has since had to make several police reports in the face of violent, often sexualized threats against her, all because she allegedly chose to have romantic and sexual encounters with people who weren't Eron Gjoni.

Eron did not and does not own Zoe Quinn. No man does. Women own themselves. So if Zoe chooses to not spend time with him? too fucking bad, man! move the fuck on with your life! You are not entitled to her time, and if you are willing to make her suffer like this you definitely don't deserve it!

The relentless harassment, anger, and violence towards women like Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian - whose "crime" was asking for less sexism in video games - is the reaction of men raised in a male supremacist culture, in what we all hope and demand will be the twilight of that oppression. They were kept separated from women, beaten into a stereotyped male role, promised supremacy, hidden from the realities of sexism, and they are bewildered and angry that women - who grew up experiencing sexism, being told that girls can't do this or that, being hit on by old men by age 12, and so on - these boyish men expected to keep their male privilege and are seeing women stand up and demand equality, and their reaction is rage. But you can't turn back the clock, boys. Women have a vote, women have money, women will not surrender power, women will have equality. Women will not be your play toys or your slaves. Women will be themselves for themselves and have nothing to do with you, women will be your equals, women will be your bosses.

And that's really the heart of this problem. Zoe was punished by the hate mob for being an independent woman, who made her own games, who dated who she wanted to, who speaks her mind. And all the hate against her hurt her but it didn't stop her, and others will rise up and have her back because that's how sisterhood fucking works, shitlords. 

Seriously, in my last relationship, my partner was dating a woman besides me, and you know what I said? Awesome! I like the lady she was dating and all three of us are still friends. I'm not saying don't be monogamous if that's your thing, but I honestly cannot understand the idea that what someone does with their own body when you aren't around is any of your fucking business. And if someone dumps you, I sure as shit don't understand why you can't just fucking accept that they have a right to their own life and let them go live it.  If someone isn't happy around you, you should WANT them to leave. Why would you ever want to be around someone who doesn't want to be with you?!

look, love and break-ups hurt and all, but you need to be a man and respect a woman for what she is - a person who is equal to you and doesn't belong to you. Women own themselves. A woman's life is hers to live.

If you want to support Zoe Quinn's work, check out her game, Depression Quest: http://www.depressionquest.com

How Workaholics Flipped the Gay Panic Script

When you are a comedy fan, you learn to let your principles slide a lot for the sake of the lulz. Because hey, joke-me-ups aren't really the best place for, like, ethics and shit. You roll with the punches, even when they are punching down, and your only regret is how redundant, thus boring, thus significantly less funny, the old lazy tropes can become. That's why when a joke rolls along that not only innovates, but does so in a way that brilliantly critiques the old, bad jokes, and actually is a joke that makes you laugh, you really laugh your fucking balls (and/or ovaries) off.

Thàt's how I felt recently catching up on Season 5 of Workaholics, when I saw the episode "Gayborhood", wherein the Dudes flip the classic "Bros Confront Gay Panic!" Trope right on its' ass and fuck it, hard (but not without love). 

As a gay person, I'm generally ready to be the butt of jokes, to get that butt fucked by homophobic-ass jokes. I'm so used to it that, like your mom, I'm not really surprised or even offended, just kinda disappointed. I was actually really excited to see the cast play out a gay panic scenario and it never even occurred to me to ask for more. But they gave me more. Much, much more. 

Spoilers ahoy, by-the-by.

The episode takes a turn when the Dudes decide to embrace their perceived accidental three-way-gay orgy and remain close friends - really close friends, with benefits, totes comfortable putting their hetero balls in each other's hetero faces to transcend literal and metaphorical obstacles. They flipped the gay panic script by making a joke of how comfortable they could be with each other's bodies imitating gay sexual positions - way funnier than Cliched fear of gayness (or of reading a blog explaining jokes to you, at least). This is how comedy really transcends - and it proves that you don't need to rely on bigotry to crack people up. & for that I gotta give my main dawgs mad props, as they might say. Well done, Sirs.