Hello, everyone. I’ve lurked on this blog for ages but comment only very rarely. I’ve got… A lot of personal stuff I’m trying to work through, but I can’t really articulate any of it at the moment. Figured I’d just try and join the conversation here anyways.

@LBT, that’s good to hear. I always thought your pocket zines were very sensitive and compassionate, I’m glad they’re reaching a bigger audience.

@WatermelonSugar, I’m sure it would be a good idea to write anyways, even if you aren’t a student. You don’t have to suggest any personal investment, just let them know about the kind of people they will be hosting. What you’ve already written in your posts could be retooled into the body of the letter, even.

@aggziliary, being a tattoo artist sounds like an amazing job. I hope you’re able to find a good apprenticeship, I imagine they’re kind of in demand due to all those shows about tattoo artists that have been out lately.

I’m not clear on how I can experience transmisogyny without being female, nor on how transphobia more generally manifests itself for cis-presenting nonbinary people. You’ve been majorly helpful to me lately; I reall appreciate it.

Bear in mind that my views aren’t exactly popular with a lot of trans people. I’m speaking from a post-structuralist, radical feminist perspective, which is generally at odds with dominant discourses of trans politics.

Transmisogyny is, in fact, aimed at trans women. But it oppresses trans women on the basis of them being AMAB and non-male (or, as I prefer to say, CAMAB, which stands for ‘coercively assigned male at birth’). Therefore, even non-binary CAMAB trans people are oppressed by transmisogyny. Whether people perceive you to be cis doesn’t change the fact that you are structurally disadvantaged in relation to cis people. How you are perceived only determines (to a limited extent) how you are treated by others – it doesn’t determine privilege. For example, I’m a lesbian, and though most people assume I’m straight, I am still marginalized by lesbophobia in that I suffer from deeply internalized lesbophobia (like I find myself thinking that my past identification as bi makes me mistakenly believe that I’m a fake lesbian). Same reasoning applies to CAMAB trans people and transmisogyny.

This isn’t an easy topic for a lot of people – I’m a trans woman and even I find this stuff confusing often – so if anything I’ve said has flown over your head, I understand.

@Ally:

What would you say the “dominant discourses of trans politics” that you’re at odds with are?

I kind of loved the Violent Femmes as a teenager, but there is some f’d up shit in there when you look critically.

Much of what I loved as a teenager turned out to be some f’d up shit.

Speaking of exceptions, Lee Aaron is still going strong :)

Yeah, the forces that push women into roles in every fucking niche in every fucking arena of human endeavour are almost overwhelming. It takes a strong person to get out there and create, it takes an even stronger one to do it in the face of active opposition and out and out sabotage.

I should probably note that I don’t find that metal meets my emotional needs the way it used to, and I’ve gradually moved into a more folk direction. I think it’s folk. Honestly, I mostly let the radio pick what I listen to. Fortunately they do a very good job at ckua.com

Okay, that was fucking awesome!

It’s been distressing to me too, Ally. The people of Palestine are even more in my prayers and chanting than usual.

@WWTH: I’ve already had to remind a few people that Zionism is not a religious movement, but one that was started by secular Jews and was, and in some cases still is, opposed by Orthodox Judaism.

Ok, so today I went to this open mic night at a local cafe. I ended up getting on stage and doing my own speech – about the social process of gendering bodies and how it needs to be examined in order to deconstruct patriarchy. I was nervous as hell, but people enjoyed it!

But ultimately, the event was ruined by this one white man who was disruptive as hell. Just before everything started he yelled about how much he hates it when “black women try to act white”. He said “The world would be better if I were allowed to grab a black woman like that and shake her until she comes to her senses.”

He also kept being a creep towards the women in the audience and the women who were on stage. And kept trying to show off how good he was at Italian. And then he kept interrupting EVERYONE, delaying the performances significantly for no reason. I felt really triggered by his behavior and felt so unsafe that I had to leave early. I got ice cream afterwards to cope with the memories of that obnoxious, misogynistic, racist asshole.

On music – at the hairdresser’s today I heard some song (no idea whose it was, but some mainstream station) that I would swear was sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks. :{

Nothing to add but HI! to all the delurkers and redelurkers, and say that [TMI alert] sitting up late last night doing a pic of Mr K and ‘self in a bubble bath proved to be a really good idea. ;)

The host politely asked him to not dominate the conversation and talk over people, and the dudebro was just like “Well, SORRY!” in a really manipulative and completely non-apologetic way.

An annoying/upsetting thing happened today and I would like to mope about it.

Content note: Emotionally abusive supervisor

\begin{mope}

I put my new paper on the public server yesterday (as someone at an event wanted to see it and it is the easiest way to legally distribute it before it is published). I didn’t upload my last paper to the server (sole author paper) but I felt bad about not uploading this one as I have a co-author and she is nice. The problem is that my emotionally abusive ex-supervisor saw that I had published something in the server mail-out and sent me an email.

The email looks nice enough, but I don’t appreciate commentary about my place of work (as my address is listed on the paper) or about my paper. Also, we aren’t friends. Finally, emailing someone that you caused to have a mental breakdown and a shedload of anxiety triggers, to ask about their life, when they publish a paper, is not cool.

To me it stinks of the boundary crossing crap that they pulled when they were my supervisor. The events that caused the anxiety triggers and mental breakdown happened a long time ago (nearly a decade now), but I had problems doing work today and I don’t appreciate it, but at least I didn’t end up shaking like last time (they emailed me when I put my thesis on the server too). Also, my achievements are mine dammit! Grumble grumble grumble.

I don’t think I want to answer their email. :(

\end{mope}

On slightly more positive news I think the paper length anxiety trigger is now gone or much weaker (this paper was published in the same journal as the paper that I wrote with ex-supervisor as a coauthor ). Also, my coauthor on this paper is nice and I am quite proud of this paper.

(My comment was in response to Ally, not AL3H. AL3H has a different kind of jerk to deal with :( )

[CN: depression, transmisogyny, abuse, violence]

So this is my third — and final, I have decided — draft of this post. In the first, I introduced myself and rambled on for paragraphs about why I was posting here. In the second, I introduced myself then tried to give some background to the issue I’m having now. It ended up, as its precursor, in the trash after the sixth paragraph. I have a tendency to write screeds of text when I try to talk about my depression, because there’s just so much that goes into it that I don’t know where to start. So I’ll start here: I am depressed. There’s all the information you really need to know in that one sentence. I could go on for ages about the various nature and nurture factors going into that fact, but in the end, it all ends at that. I am miserable and there’s nothing I can really do about it.

When I visit him, my father ignorantly asks me what I’m depressed about at least once a week as if I’ll ever have an answer for him, but the truth is that I never quite know what is causing my paralyzing grief at that particular moment in time, and to give one pitiful example seems insufficient given the magnitude of it all and its effect on my life. It is not solely the fact that my transphobic family refuses to acknowledge me as the woman I identify as, nor even my fear of my brother who hardly half a year ago physically assaulted me — my family insists it was a harmless fight, blissfully ignoring the fact that I, as a pacifist, refused to strike him. I have an ex who gaslighted me for years, lying to my face about my own past until I no longer trusted my own memory. I have nightmares about him bimonthly, but even he is not solely responsible. My mother, an depressed alcoholic, wasted away in poverty until cirrhosis took her liver and her life when I was thirteen. The lingering pain and regret of that loss affected me for years, but that is not why I am incapable of functioning today.

My life is not a tragedy. I have innumerable privileges, from my wealth to my light skin, from my supportive friends to my wonderful partner, and I never forget that. Yet here I am, broken, numb, apathetic. I stopped taking hormones after three months and haven’t talked to my doctor since. Of every course I took this year, I only passed one. I do not remember the last project I started that actually reached completion. My depression rules my existance and I don’t even know how to talk about it.

I feel like there should be more to this post, but I also feel like I’ve gone on too long again. A large part of me doesn’t even want to put it up. You all are not my therapist. You are not responsible for my well- being. It’s a selfish thing, really, but I just want to be heard, I suppose. I want to feel like I actually exist. For the past year, I have simply lived in the protective bubble that is my partner’s love. I have failed, repeatedly, but I have survived, and I suppose I’m tired of simply surviving.

@Cassandrakitty: I have real issues with the idea that being anti Israeli government policy towards the Palestinians is being anti-semitic. Even within Israel itself there’s opposition (from people who are Jewish) to a lot of what the government is doing, so when people try to frame things as if wanting what the Israeli govt is doing to the Palestinians to stop as being as sign that you don’t give a shit about Jewish people it feels very disingenuous.

The wingnuts hyperventilate every time you call Israel an apartheid nation, stating that this is beyond the pale and anyone making that statement must be anti-semitic.

Turns out that a 2012 opinion poll suggests that a majority of Israelis may think Israel has apartheid policies, although the results are contested.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/haaretz-changes-tack-on-major-story-that-alleged-widespread-apartheid-attitudes-in-israel/

I’m still having huge problems with my stepson’s mum.

She seems to have stopped spanking him, thank god, but that may be because she has hardly seen him. She got him a nursery placement where she lives (very far from us) which totally altered our schedule, without consulting us, so that was stressful. He has only attended three days out of the past nine though, and all the other days…we’ve wound up having him, at short notice, for extremely flimsy reasons.

Last week, she texted us on Monday night telling us she couldn’t pick him up the next day, as scheduled, and didn’t know when she could because she had a “kidney infection” which transformed into “gastric inflammation” which then went away in time for her to have him for two days, only to recur this week, again one day before she had to pick him up. We had him three extra days, today she is sufficiently rested to take him for one day. Not only does she see no problem with this, she also sees no problem giving my partner grief – insults, attitude, woe-is-me rants – if he checks in too often because she has literally gone “you have him until…who knows when? I’ll keep you updated” and then doesn’t.

Last weekend, the day we dropped him off, I got norovirus. I couldn’t even keep water down, but I had to force myself to keep drinking only to throw it + bile up, over and over. We wound up asking her to keep him extra (for the second time in two and a half years) because if he caught it…I mean, how am I going to convince a three year old to drink water when it will invariably just trigger a painful fit of vomiting? He could have ended up in hospital. But she point blank refused to take him more than one extra night i.e. we were going to pick him up last thing on Sunday, we wound up picking him up first thing on Monday. She sent three multiple-page texts decrying my partner and I for “using her” when she “can’t afford all these extra days” and she claimed “when I ask you, you’re my last resort but it seems like you just come to me for anything!” She also suggested I go stay ‘somewhere else’ while dangerously ill, quite apart from the fact there is nowhere I could go.

So anyway, that about sums up my life right now, and it’s beyond tiring. Something has to give.

@TheVitulus – Hi, and welcome. If you need to speak, speak. A lot of people here – myself included – have suffered from depression. I haven’t lived your life, but I get where you’re coming from. So many hugs, if you want them.