On Letting Go of Privilege

As I discussed in my previous post, I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the disparity between my internal sense of gender and my outward presentation. The primary reason for this has simply been that in a lot of ways it is easier to present this way. I spent a very long time being very confused about my gender (in many ways I suspect I always will be) and during that time it seemed pointless to adjust my presentation.

I no longer feel this way. At some point in the past six months, being continually mistaken for something I am not stopped feeling like success. Now I can't ignore it. There's a constant crawling under my skin, a never-ending cry in the back of my brain.

I have spent over a decade desperately cultivating a semblance of femininity that I have never felt. Ever since my body started to change, becoming almost a caricature of what our culture sees as female, I have tried mold myself, my thoughts, looks and actions, to the way that my body is perceived in society. This effort has had mixed results. Passing as cisgender has become second nature to me in the years since puberty, and retracing the path to myself has not been and will not be easy.

However, now that I can see myself, and now that I've been seen by others, I can't go back. So instead I'm moving forward, and I would be lying if I didn't admit that I am terrified. If I had been honest with myself I would have done this years ago, but giving up my cis-privilege is a big deal, and it's scary.

I still seem "normal" right now. A little odd, definitely, past 25 and still a tomboy. Quirky, but certainly not threatening. That's probably going to change. People can get upset when they come across someone who they can't classify. I know, I've seen it. I know exactly what I'm giving up, and what I will be facing. But now, for so many reasons, it's finally worth the price to be free.

Gender Fucked

It's very strange being here. Everything is, for lack of a better work, normal in a way that I am not at all used to. I come from a unique place, I know that. It is easy to forget exactly how unique until I leave.

Where I come from, everything has been queered. Gender is highly variable, and is on display in a myriad of ways. That is my normal. I forget that this is not the case in other places.

And now I'm here, in the real world. There are no queers here. There are gay men and there are lesbians, but there are no queers. No butches, no androgynes, no high femmes, no fairies, no dykes, no sissies, no gender fucking.

It is suffocating in a way I don't think I could have imagined. There is no one here like me, no one who chafes at the boxes the way that I do. I am queerer than I look. Being here makes me want to try to look the way I feel.

"If I looked on the outside the way I feel on the inside, it would explode people's minds," he said to me. Exactly. This a million times over. At home it didn't matter as much, here it does.

It feels restrictive in a way that I haven't felt in years. Not since I was a child fighting to wear pants instead of skirts, begging to be able to cut my hair. I only won one of those battles, the other became an area of unquestioned discomfort, until now.

For some reason, when I was commonplace I needed it less. If I could see myself reflected in the people around me I didn't yearn so desperately to display it myself. And it is easy to be complacent when there is nothing at stake. That is at least half the truth.

The other half is that it matters more to me here and now. No one understood before and, even in my queer paradise, I was afraid. I wanted just one way that I could be normal and uncomplicated. I knew for a long time that it wouldn't work, but I tried. It's different now. I have someone I can talk to, someone who sees me. We look so different, and yet we are so alike. Except that he is far braver. He gives me courage.

I feel more and more like I am hiding. I don't look like who I am, I probably never will. I can, however, stop taking the easy way out. I can stop hiding in plain sight, disguised as a cisgendered, straightish girl (or as a lesbian, depending on who you ask).

At home it would have been unremarkable, here it will be a political act. More importantly, it will make me feel whole.

On Being "Crazy"

As an addendum to my last post, I'm really sick of reading/ hearing "well, I don't think of insane or crazy being ableist words and I (or my friend, parent, whatever) have clinical depression." This isn't a topic I've discussed openly much, if ever, so bear with me.

Depression has its own stigma, people who are depressed are thought of as weak, they should "just get over it and be happy," or are told its "just a case of the blues." I don't want to suggest that depression isn't a real disease or minimize it in any way, but it's not the kind of mental illness that people are referring to when they use the word "crazy."

Crazy is something altogether different. Crazy is delusion, psychosis, mania, schizophrenia. Insanity, in the depths of society's psyche, is jabbering in tongues rocking back and forth in a padded room. It can't be trusted. It is the serial killer, the mother who kills her children, the man who laughs while committing the most vile crimes - this is what "crazy" conjures up in the minds of the general public.

This terror, this nightmare looming in the dark places of our collective consciousness is harmful. Incredibly so. It means that people who are not neurotypical are stuck with the paradoxical choice of lying or being mistrusted. Perhaps more importantly, it makes us less likely to seek help when it is needed. It took me years to admit, even to myself, that my brain was fundamentally different than most. Because I didn't want to be crazy.

I still don't. I'm terrified of the psychotic break that I am 30 - 50% more likely than others to have, even though I know that it would probably be manageable if it were to happen. I don't generally share the fact of my mental illness with others, even with those I am close to. Admitting who I am is risking ever being trusted or taken seriously again. The reason for this is "crazy."

Wow

So after that horrible Roller Coaster thread, Feministing seems to be full of reasonable, positive discussions of kink and BDSM.  Considering the way that every other discussion over there has gone, I'm impressed.

I sure hope this trend continues.

More from Feministing

I like this, although I'm not entirely sure why she posted it under "Sexual Assault" rather than "Sex."  Simple, straightforward, and not a bad analogy.  I wonder how long it will take for the comment thread to devolve into viciousness and chaos.  Unfortunately, I'm almost 100% sure that's what is going to happen.

Closets and Such

So, as part of their violence against women prevention/awareness week my college showed The Price of Pleasure a couple weeks ago.  The presentation was put on by the Women's Studies Advisory Committee, which is essentially code for my advisor who runs the Women's Studies program (I am a math major now, but I used to be a women's studies major and I did not change advisors).  There was a brief discussion (about 45 minutes to an hour) following the film.  I went into it expecting to be at least slightly annoyed, but I wasn't quite prepared for how angry and uncomfortable I became.

The thing is, most of my current social circle is fairly kink-friendly; I generally don't have to deal with any sort of real anti-kink attitudes in real life (online is a different story).  As a result I just wasn't prepared for people's reactions to the content of the film, particularly the more explicitly BDSM imagery.  The film in no way addresses the differences between consensually negotiated BDSM and actual violence/degradation, in fact it tends to conflate the two.  Essentially, in addition to being fairly explicitly anti-porn the film has a strong unstated anti-kink message as well.  

So I just sat there watching these people, some of whom I know fairly well and otherwise like, recoil in horror, shaking their heads in disgust as I silently fumed in the corner.  Fundamentally, it wasn't actually the disgust or the horror that really bothered me, I can at least somewhat understand that, it was the obvious sense of moral superiority that accompanied it; the room was filled with an overwhelming sense of distain.  My few attempts at addressing this were either ignored or treated with thinly veiled contempt.

I don't really know what to say about the experience.  It was extremely unpleasant, of course, but that wasn't really the worst part.  I left that discussion feeling ashamed, slightly dirty.  Some part of me really wishes that I had been brave enough to say what I was really thinking.  I wanted to stand up and point out that as wonderful as all their theory was this was my real life they were talking about.  I wanted to scream.  I wanted to tell them that it wasn't porn, it was ideas like theirs that had seeped into my unconscious to warp and poison my sexuality.  I wanted to tell them how hard I had to fight to find myself again.  Most of all I wanted to point out exactly how dangerous their words could be.

But I didn't.  I didn't say much of anything once it became obvious that they wouldn't listen.  I chose self-preservation over truth, and while I know that choice was the right one, I still couldn't help feeling slightly bad about it.

Examining Desire (Part 3) - A Conversation

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Journey to the Underworld

The recent conversations I've been having at feministing, along with some thinking I've been doing on my own, have brought up some stuff I usually don't like to talk about.  Some truths are hard to face head on, I guess; it can be easier to leave the demons lurking below the surface.  The thing is, though, that sometimes they reach out and grab at you when you're not paying attention.

For as long as I can remember I've known that I was different.  I would volunteer to be tied up in childhood games, at night when I went to sleep I would cocoon myself tightly in the blankets until I could hardly move.  I remember playing some sort of damsel in distress game with the girl who lived across the street and failing miserably to grasp the concept.  We had been kidnapped (or something) by the "Bad Guy" and were now being held captive.  I remember my thoughts being something along the lines of an eager, "so is he going to do something horrible with us?" to which the response was, "no the prince will rescue us first"  (my reaction to the revelation that we didn't want to be captives was to suggest we just escape ourselves instead of waiting around to be rescued).  

For nearly as long as I can remember being different I can remember knowing that this difference was Bad and Wrong.  I knew this so surely that I tried to squash the difference, and I hated myself when I couldn't.  It would squeeze its way out, filling my mind with thoughts that disgusted and excited me all at once.  And the fact that they excited me disgusted me even more.  

This fusion of budding sexuality, shame, and guilt surged within me for several years before sucking me into the nightmare that, looking back, seems like a logical result of my painful insecurity and self-loathing.

I was sixteen, at a new high school, horribly shy and alone.  "Hook a loop of fear-paralysation into a mind frantically denying its need to surrender, bait a touch-starved, curious adolescent with affection from a pretty older boy, and watch a psyche fragment into a perfect rape victim and a panicked, impotent observer. Respectful and loving submission was unavailable, unthinkable, unallowable, so all I had was deer-in-the-headlights capitulation, where my sexual drives and my terror and his unceasing pressure conspired to shove me into a closet in my head."   I froze - couldn't speak, couldn't move.  I think he was oblivious rather than malicious, but maybe that's just what I tell myself in order to retain some shred of sanity.  I have never forgiven myself for my inability to respond, or for what came after.  At the end, when I could speak again, the only words that came were the ones he wanted to hear, not the agonized scream that lived deep inside me for years before I finally let it out.  After all, he was nice enough about it, he just never noticed I was gone.

A good girl, a normal girl, would have said no or pushed him away, it would have been rape.  But I didn't, because I couldn't, so it was just sex.  Because really, if there wasn't something wrong with me, if I wasn't such a terribly sick freak, it never would have happened.  And so I stayed.  For five years.  

It wasn't all bad, but most of it was.  And it got worse as time passed, became explicitly rape.  I learned how to say no, and how to push back.  One day, four years later, the wall just snapped.  I threw him halfway across the room.  I never let him touch me again, even though it was a few more months before I left without ever looking back.  I learned how to fight for myself.  And somehow, by learning how to articulate and defend what I did not want, I managed to come to terms with what I did.  

So don't (anyone, ever) tell me that my submission is like abuse or my partner is an abuser.  Don't be surprised if I bare my teeth when you suggest that I can't make that distinction.  I've been to that hell, I shed my humanity to the gate-keepers along the way.  And then I came back. 

With me I brought back clarity of vision.  Believe me when I say I can see the difference.

Examining Desire (Part 2) - On Losing Myself

I said “I want to lose myself in you, in this.”  Is that what frightens people?  Because I wish it didn’t.  I wish there weren’t people out there who are afraid of that desire, protective in a way that I do not need.  I think that they are afraid that the loss is a bad thing, or that I won’t be able to find myself again.  Maybe the problem is in the language.

What do I mean when I say I want to lose myself?  I think this is the crux of the issue.  I mean I want to lose the neurotic perfectionism that hounds me.  I want to lose my fear that I am not enough, I want to lose the painful memories that live at the edges of every moment.  I want to “shuffle off this mortal coil,” but only temporarily.  But is that really losing “myself?”  When I have cast off all the external trappings of my daily life, what is left?  

All those things that make me who I am －  my brilliance, my insecurity, my past, my hopes and fears for the future － when they are gone what is left?  Only here and now and what is happening in this moment.  I wish I could find the words to explain how this feels, but I don’t.  Maybe language is too much a part of this external self, too closely tied to what I want to let go.  Maybe that is why it is hard from me to put it into words.  The closest I can come is this: I do not want to lose myself because I am running or hiding from something.  And I am not lost forever, I will always come back.  But when I am there, when I am gone I am also coming home.  I lose myself so I can find myself.

Addendum to "The Problem As I See It"

Sorry if I was over generalizing before, it's just really frustrating to me the way that real life can get lost in discussions of social theory.

On this thread at feministing, Jadelyn says: "It's funny, because I *tried* that navel-gazing back when I was realizing what some of my sexual desires were and, at the same time, growing into my feminism. Yeah, that was an ugly mind-fuck to work through."

Yeah, this is the real issue for me. I mean, I think that curiosity and social critiques are fine and all, but when you're at that stage - when you're young and unsure about your desires - if the message that you get is that your sexuality is incompatible with or harmful to feminism, well it's not a fun (or safe) place to be.

Maybe my experience is completely abnormal because I grew up in a very feminist town and area, but it was such a struggle for me to be okay with my sexuality. I tried for years to just act normal in the hopes that if I tried hard enough at it I just might change. I didn't. But I did end up in a really horrible abusive vanilla relationship and I think that part of the reason that happened, and a large part of the reason I had so much trouble leaving, was that I struggled so much with being submissive.

I think that to a certain extent I had internalized the idea that my desires justified the way that I was treated, I mean I wanted to be dominated, right? And everyone knows that's weird and dirty and certainly not feminist or self-respecting. If I had had a feminist community saying, "no, these two things can be compatible, you can have and act on those desires and still deserve to be respected as a human being" my life would have been much simpler.

So, I'm not saying don't critique, but just be careful of the ways in which you frame your questions and the messages that you send.

The Problem As I See It

It's not that I have a problem with cultural critiques of sexuality, I don't.  I am fine with discussing theory.  Really, we can all sit around and talk about how patriarchy affects sexuality all day long (although I'd really prefer the conversation included all kinds of sexuality), but we need to be aware of the effect that our words and our opinions have on people.  The problem comes when theory begins to interfere with practical reality.  

I feel, very strongly, that if member's of the dominant culture want to ask members of a less-privileged subculture to "examine their desires," it must be done very carefully and with as much respect as possible.  It's easy to theorize about things that have no effect on your own life, but for some people it's not just a theory.  It is imperative to remember that what is no more than an intellectual excursion to some is to others a matter of health, sanity, even life and death.

I'm not trying to be dramatic here, this is serious.  Many, maybe most, of us have examined our desires more thoroughly than you could possibly imagine.  We have passed countless sleepless nights wondering why we are the way that we are, often asking ourselves the question, "what is wrong with me?"  We have asked ourselves if there is some trauma that explains this desire, if perhaps it is due to some relational issue with our parents.  You had better believe that any of us who call ourselves feminists have already thought to ask ourselves if we are acting on some sort of patriarchal conditioning or internalized self-loathing.  We would have to be fools not to have considered that, please don't insult us by implying that we haven't.

We have hated ourselves and feared our desires, fruitlessly wished to just be normal.  Some of us have become suicidal.  Some have desperately tried to be the people we thought we should be, we have even tried to convince ourselves.  As a result, we can (and do) end up in horribly unhealthy and dangerous situations.  And really, this is the place where I would really like to see some feminist critique, but I don't.  Everyone is to busy telling me to examine my desires to deal with the practical implications of my examination.

So here's the deal, and this is what I wish feminist discussions of BDSM and submissive women looked like.  It can be dangerous to be a submissive woman in a male dominated society.  Specifically, it is very dangerous to be a sexually submissive woman who is conflicted or ashamed about her sexual desires.  Women who are trying to come to terms with submissive desires need a support structure of strong, vocal, and supportive women.  Trying to deny submissive desires, or feeling secretive and guilty about them, is dangerous; it can easily lead to relationships that actually are abusive and make it harder to leave those relationships.  This is particularly true when we feel alienated from feminist support systems and discourses regarding abuse.  If we are sexually assaulted we are likely to be told that we were asking for it because, after all, we're into that sort of thing.  We are also likely to feel confused and guilty about the ways our desires resemble the assault.

Submissive women do not need to be talked down to, we (generally) do not need to be told to examine our desires.  We certainly don't need you to help protect us from ourselves.  What we do need is your respect and support.  Please remember that, regardless of your intentions, the words you use matter.  Choose them wisely.  

Crossposted at http://community.feministing.com/2009/03/the-problem-as-i-see-it.html

Examining Desire (Part 1)

Why am I the way I am?  It is something that I have spent years wondering, easily more than half my life.  The standard reasons given by those who don’t get it, that I am merely reacting to having been abused or acting out the patriarchal script I was raised with, really don’t apply to me.  I was raised in a subculture intent on examining and deconstructing patriarchy , and I had fantasies of bondage and submission long before I ever experienced any type of abuse.  

Actually, I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember.  As long as I have been aware of my sexuality, I have known that it is inextricably linked to things that I was supposed to find distasteful, disgusting, or frightening.  The first real sexual fantasy I ever had was of being tied down and forced to orgasm.  I was less than 10 years old, ashamed, and terrified that there was something horribly wrong with me.  Before that, before I even recognized it as sexual, it was still there.  I remember when I was five or six one of the local boys wanted to practice his knots (for Boy Scouts, I think) by tying someone to a chair, I eagerly volunteered.  I didn't think of it as sexual, I didn't know yet what sexual was really, I just knew it made me feel good.

It’s not that this is the only aspect of my sexuality, it’s not, but it is a very large and fundamentally important part.  There are plenty of aspects of vanilla sex that do appeal to  me, and that I thoroughly  enjoy, but they are certainly not my primary interest.  To be sure, I could spend a lifetime without engaging in any sort of kinky behavior, but I would be unfulfilled — fundamentally unhappy.  Believe me, I've tried it, I know.

Part of what appeals to me is the lack of control.  This doesn’t mean that I want to avoid making my own decisions or don’t want to be a responsible adult.  When I say that I don’t want to be in control what I really mean is that I want to let go of my perfectionism, of all the uptight bullshit that is always happening in my head.  I also mean sensation － I have a lot of trouble really letting go and just feeling things.  If I’m not “in charge” of a situation, it’s much easier to push past that and feel.  I mean really feel, to the fullest extent possible and then some; I want to be overwhelmed with sensation.