In a World Where Boyhood is Weaponhood

•November 24, 2023 • 1 Comment
A picture of a disassembled handgun whose parts have been damaged. The picture is a black and white photo with a red hue applied.

A number of months ago, during an exchange of emails, I had mentioned to a friend that society had tried to turn me into a weapon during my childhood. She asked me to expand upon this but I never got around to the task. This is my answer.

I am not the person I was when I turned 17. Few people are when they’re in their mid fifties, although, exceptions do exist. I mean this in a more radical sense, however: by the time I turned 18, I had, in so many ways, become a completely different person from who I was when I turned 17. Radical personality shifts were starting to take hold, and I would diverge even more wildly from who I had been, as the next decade of my life progressed.

So, who was I in the years leading up to my 17th birthday?

In a word, I was a mess.

I was a mess because the social training that patriarchal society tries to shove male assigned human beings through is deliberately crafted to produce a very specific form of mess: one prone to subjecting others to violence in the context of a larger social matrix formed of interlacing acts of struggles for dominance. In a society which values acts of power over others, training a part of the populace to actively express themselves via violence is a crucial component of creating and maintaining a highly stratified society in which power is concentrated at the top.

Empires need soldiers to populate the military, they need police officers to populate a domestic military, and they need watchful eyes attached to ready fists, distributed in families and communities everywhere, to keep the general populace in compliance with the social order.

Patriarchal societies need living, breathing weapons to keep the social order.

We call the living weapons who populate the first line of defense of the patriarchal order, men. (Although, all are certainly encouraged to do their part, regardless of sex or gender.)

One does not arrive in the world as a fully formed weapon when exiting the womb, even though the evidence of external plumbing may fit a common prejudice dictating that phallic genitals equal inherently violent individuals. Such a prized creation take years of training and brainwashing. Luckily, this social training was formed eons ago, as patriarchy has had a thriving existence all the way back to pre-history. We call this social training boyhood and the culture that exists among boys is imported into the newest generation and maintained by older siblings, parents, teachers, and messaging from everywhere in patriarchal society. This social training is centered upon teaching male assigned children games of violence-enforced dominance from cradle to adulthood.

We consider all of these things to be normal. They largely go unnoticed and are considered to be “healthy” aspects of boyhood development. It is only when male assigned children fail to conform to this social training (brainwashing) that people start to notice. This failure is met with violence, both physical and emotional, in order to enforce compliance. Peers and family are expected to be vectors for that violence, “for the good of the child.” After all, one does not want their sons to grow up to be cowards, homosexuals, or deviants prone to frock-wearing and other assorted feminine horrors.

(With great pride and relief, I can assure you that I eventually turned out to be one of those cowardly sexual deviants who is prone to a multitude of feminine horrors… but I’m getting ahead of my story.)

This is what the social training entails:

1) Violence is strength. Violence is honorable. A failure to respond to violence with violence is a sign of dishonor, weakness, effeminacy, and moral degeneracy. If someone hits you, you hit them harder. If you lose a fight, you deserve the suffering and violence you are subjected to. Non-violent boys are scum and deserve abuse.

2) Emotion is weakness. Don’t allow your peers to see your emotions. They will use your emotions as a point of vulnerability in their struggle to assume dominance over you. Build emotional walls around yourself. Wear an emotionally featureless exterior. Bury your emotions whenever necessary. Being emotional is feminine weakness. Stoicism is strength.

3) Every social interaction is an opportunity for social competition. Every social interaction is a means to protect or elevate one’s position in the social strata. Maintaining one’s social standing in the presence of other boys is everything. Losing respect and honor among male peers will be likely be punished with violence. This violence may take the form of emotional/social abuse, physical abuse, or both.

4) Feminine behavior is to be avoided at all costs. Girls/women are inferior. Feminine behavior among boys is a sign of that same inferiority and will be met with violence from peers and family. A feminine boy deserves to be shamed through physical and emotional abuse.

5) It is your role to be a protector of others and an enforcer of the social order. Violence, both emotional and physical, are the go-to tools in fulfilling that role.

6) Elements 1 through 5 are natural, inborn qualities of maleness. A failure to embody these qualities is unnatural and a sign of inferior deviancy. Self-hatred and shame are both encouraged and enforced.

The end product of 17+ years of this social training is a person who has incorporated violence and dominance into their very identity as a male person. Violence or the potential to inflict violence is a projection of self and will upon the social world. Violence and dominance, or the threat thereof, function as the social currency of masculinity.

At the end of this process you will have likely become a living vector of violence and dominance. You may or may not be conscious of this. This state of being will feel like “normal” “healthy” masculinity. It is the water in which you swim as a boy-fish.

Depending upon your position in the class hierarchy, you might become cannon fodder in the next military adventure of your country, or you might come to wear a badge and wield a gun to enforce the social order, or you might ascend to be a political leader or functionary who employs human weapons further down the social strata as a means of protection and enforcement of one’s dictates.

All of these things are portrayed as goodness and normalcy in a patriarchal society.

Being a conduit of violence and dominance is normal, so long as you support the social order in doing so.

You are a weapon, whether you realize it or not.

I chose not to be a weapon when I was 17. I turned my back on all of it, and I embraced pacifism, non-violence, and my previously repressed transfemininity.

I chose a different way of being in the world when I embraced womanhood in my 17th year. As my 20s arrived, I came out of the other side of this multi-year process of transformation as a very different human being. I was no longer the same person who existed at the start of her 17th year.

If you have ever read the Sisters of Dorley series, I essentially “basemented myself,” to borrow a phrase from the friend I mentioned at the start of this essay. Embracing womanhood entailed a process of profound transformation of self, and a crucial part of that process entailed a rejection of the violence and weaponhood imposed by patriarchal training.

However, that is another story requiring an equally long essay to explain.

Nevertheless, you too can escape the trajectory that 17+ years of brainwashing have subjected you to, if you wish. Everyone is capable of change if they are willing to do so and they are serous about doing the work required for personal change. (And you certainly don’t have to be transfeminine to accomplish this.) It is entirely possible and I encourage you to do so for your own betterment, for the safety of others around you, and for the betterment (and survival) of the world.

Although, your personal process will likely look far different from mine.

Posted in Abuse, Boys Will Be Boys, Bullying, Childhood, Childhood Abuse, Children, Feminism, Feminist, Gender, Homophobia, Masculinity, Patriarchy, Toxic Masculinity, Transgender

Pawns and Misanthropy

•August 31, 2023 • Comments Off on Pawns and Misanthropy
a photograph of people playing golf in the foreground while a forest fire rages on a nearby the mountain slope in the background

Yesterday, I said to a friend, “I’m used to playing the role of ‘Bad Person.’ So, I will play Bad Person if a situation requires it. That’s the benefit of being a misanthrope. I just don’t care what people think.” There was silence on the phone. This is the usual response when I express these sentiments. It is not the first time.

There are small circles of people whom I care about and my standing among those few matter to me.

Outside of that small circle… I no longer care.

In my five decades of life, I’ve learned that what the majority views as ethical and good is largely harmful and bigoted. I’ve learned that society exists to promote the interests of the those with power and prestige, and that the average person is inculcated to reflexively support and promote the violence of this system.

I have left my family of birth behind because they fully embrace the violence of this system, and its values and behaviors.

In many ways, I have left larger society behind as well.

When one does this, one’s relationship with humanity tends to attenuate and fade.

This journey began long ago. My path was set by who I am.

As a trans woman, I know that society sees me as “crazy” and “sexually perverted.” I have rejected one of its most basic forms of organizing people: a dual caste system based upon biology and several inches of flesh located between human legs. In rejecting something so fundamental to the way society organizes itself, and so fundamental to the means in which people determine how to interact with others, I have rejected the basic laws of society.

This makes me a threat. This makes me unstable, untrustworthy, delusional, deviant, and dangerous.

I am portrayed as a danger to children, other women, and to society as a whole. No matter how small and nonthreatening I might make myself, I will always be the crazy, dangerous pervert that society wishes to sequester, imprison, and exterminate.

I am a hated and feared outsider. I have always lived on the margins. Consequently, I am used to being a Bad Person. I am a Bad Person by definition of my being, life, and actions.

Five decades of this has left me in a place of no longer caring about my species. You want me to either conform by distorting and compressing myself into a false and ill fitting maleness, or you want me to suffer and die. Decades of this have broken down and dissolved my relationship with humanity.

But in the face of this loss, a smile curls upon my face. When I see you for who you are, humanity, a sad and malignant laughter escapes my lips.

I see you waxing superior about my deviancy and degeneracy, while you predate and kill each other over power and coin every day. I see you destroying your planet. I see you destroying yourselves. I reflect upon my “evil” in the face of a planet killing evil you perpetrate upon yourselves and all that surrounds us.

You are the danger and degeneracy which you condemn.

Consequently, I have stopped caring about you.

I am use to being a Bad Person in a Bad Species.

I am now comfortable with this role because a Bad Species’ understanding of what is terrible and vile is, ironically, a projection of its own will to destruction and mayhem.

I have disengaged from your conformity and violent expectations humanity, and I have tried to be better than you. I embrace being the Bad Person in the room, for this makes me better than you. I wear this ignominy with pride.

You may direct your anger and hatred toward me. That’s only natural. You have taught me to be unpleasant in your presence and I have embraced this too.

But the world is burning around you. I think you have higher priorities to tend to. I am the distraction that power waves in your faces while it pours accelerant upon the flames. Fire is good for profits and power, you see… and your hatred of those whom you have been taught to view as dangerous and deviant helps lessen the pain of your scorching flesh. It is the drug which the powerful have gifted you. You are well addicted to the self-destructive lure of dissociation through hatred.

You are pawns. Your self-pleasuring addiction to hatred will not save you.

You won’t survive this unless you stop being pawns.

None of us will.

Posted in Alienation, Bigotry, Biological Determinism, Capitalism, conformity, Environmentalism, Hate, Misantrhopy, Transgender

A Note About Crying

•May 13, 2023 • Comments Off on A Note About Crying

The act of crying—who should and shouldn’t cry, and how society puts gendered social meaning upon it—is surrounded by odd social circumstances. These circumstances carry a sizeable payload of sexist bullshit.

Here’s my story with the whole crying thing…

I cried fairly easily as a child. When I was in elementary school, I’d sometimes try to think of the saddest thing possible to make myself cry. Crying felt nice, actually. It was a pleasant release. So, why not?

And then came the stupidity of toxic masculinity via my father and my peers.

I was outside on a playing court one day, during physical education class, and some incident of bullying happened (with me as the target) and I burst into tears. Not the best option in front of your toxic boy peers but still, I cried.

My parents picked me up from school and I mentioned that I had a rather awful day. They inquired as to what had happened. I told my story, mentioning my tears. My father became enraged and started berating me as to how awful and unmasculine my choice to cry was. (Um, tears aren’t a choice? They happen.)

My father was an asshole. Much of his personality was “asshole” but I was just a little kid and I didn’t know that “asshole” was a character flaw in a parent. He portrayed “asshole” as a healthy form of masculinity, at least for him. You weren’t allowed to be an asshole toward him, though. Just toward other kids. But I digress…

My father taught me an important but wrong message that day. Only girls and women cry and you don’t want to be a girl, do you? (Actually yes, I did want to be a girl but I was too afraid and ashamed to really go there.)

My father was wrong, of course, but I was ignorant of that fact and I wanted to be a good, obedient offspring and so, I complied. I stopped crying. Which… was really rather terrible.

A few years later, male puberty happened. Hormonal shifts happened. And things got weird.

Fast forward to the most depressed years of my late teens. Talk about sad trans girl. Geez, that was me. I was depressed. Really depressed. Depressed as in, “looking out my fifth floor dormitory window and contemplating human flight” depressed. I’m not exaggerating.

I really needed to cry. I needed some kind of physical release from these feelings. I had long ago abandoned the “boys don’t cry” bullshit because I thought it was sexist and dumb and also because, well, I was a girl. (Actually, a young woman at that age, but you know.)

So, I tried to cry. Nothing. I tried harder. Still nothing. Not a twinge. Fuck.

I had several years of solid depression during all of that, and not a single tear happened. What the hell? Why couldn’t I cry? I wasn’t ashamed of crying. I didn’t see it as weakness, as I did when I was a kid. Why wouldn’t tears come when I most needed them?

Fast forward to my first month or two on HRT (estrogen). I was working my evening shift at the natural food store near college. I had a particularly irascible customer use me as their emotional punching bag. They left the counter and something weird happened. My eyes twinged in that “verge of tears” way. I was completely amused and astounded. Tears? And not over something horrifically sad, like a parent’s death, but over a crabby customer? HOLY SHIT. This is… neat.

The longer I was on HRT, the easier tears became. I was ecstatic over this. I had longed for the ability to cry ever since my years of dry, no-tear depression. I had no idea this would happen with HRT but it did, and I was so, SO relieved.

Years later, I now cry regularly. I cry over movies, books, and songs. Any strong emotions can bring tears—not just sadness. I still prefer being alone or with someone I trust when this happens but I am still grateful for the ability.

I am my mother’s daughter. She cried easily as well. I am reminded of her when I cry. It’s nice.

So, let’s look at social angle of this. This part annoys me.

People might be reading this and thinking, “Well of course, women cry more. Women are more emotional.”

Oh? How do you qualify “more emotional”? Sure, I cry more than I did because a change in my body’s chemistry allowed it. The physical experience/sensation of crying does subjectively enhance and intensify the sensation of the accompanying emotion BUT, and this is a big BUT, there is a physical release during crying that leaves me feeling calm and cleansed afterward. The emotion recedes and I feel… clear.

So, how do you compare that with not being able to cry and having emotions bottled up, searching for another form of release? It might be anger, instead. Punching a wall or a person, for example? (I never did this but other people certainly do.) It might be even deeper depression and reaching for drinking or drug use as an outlet. Or it might be something else. Those emotions still need expression and release. Somehow.

So, does this still make me the “emotional” one? Because I’m the one living in a female body? Because I swallow estradiol tablets each day? That’s sexist bullshit.

For a good portion of the populace who runs on higher levels of testosterone (which come into play during and after puberty), lower levels of prolactin are produced in response to that hormone, and low levels of prolactin cause a reduced propensity to cry. (I’m not making this up. Look it up.)

Here’s what I think.

Over the course of humanity’s existence, this difference in a subset of the populace resulted in an over-generalization that men (and boys) do not cry, whereas women and girls do. The many human outliers who do not fit this pattern were ignored, and it became a hard social rule in some societies that crying is feminine (and unmanly) and that crying is a sign of irrationality and over-emotional tendencies in women.

Think about it. It takes a much higher threshold of emotion to trigger a crying response in adults who happen to be “running on testosterone.” The emotional threshold is much lower for those people “running on estrogen.” I’m speaking of averages, here. There are many people who do not fit that generalization but there are enough who do, so that people’s perceptions of crying are impacted, and (stupid) gendered social rules arise.

Men, too often, assume that crying in women indicates the same level of emotional intensity they have to experience before crying happens. Women cry far more often and this happens over far less intense events than would trigger crying in men. So, men assume that women are just “more emotional” than men because they would never cry over such “trivial” matters.

Mix this difference in experience with patriarchy, shake vigorously, and an eon later, the assumption that women are emotional, unstable, broken people drops out of the end of the historical process.

And it’s bullshit. It’s a perception based upon male people’s embodied experiences being projected upon women.

To put it in other words, just because men’s bodies (and toxic social rules) stole their ability to cry, that doesn’t mean that women are irrational and “emotional.” Men are just as emotional as women but they’re forced to either stifle their emotions, by biology or social dictate, or they must seek another outlet for their emotions. (And sometimes that outlet hurts men and/or other people nearby.) Don’t embrace the conceit that men are somehow more emotionally stable and rational than women, however. They are not.

Just let go of the sexism, OK? It’s not cool.

So…

Know this: I won’t judge you if you cry in my presence. I welcome it. Regardless of who you are, regardless of the body type, or hormone type, or whatever. It’s a wonderful ability and shouldn’t be suppressed or judged. I only judge the sexism that has entwined with crying.

If you can’t cry, I won’t judge that either. We do not all have the same ability in these matters. It varies by person and in ways that fail to divide evenly by gendered lines.

Just let go of the sexism, OK? It’s not cool. We all have emotions, and we all need to express them. We don’t express them in the same ways but none of that should be used a basis for forming supremacist ideas about who is more or less rational.

Posted in Childhood, Childhood Abuse, Emotions, Femininity, Gender, Masculinity, Toxic Masculinity, Transgender

A Window Into My World

•May 8, 2023 • Comments Off on A Window Into My World

A few days ago, I was writing about my experiences as a trans person and someone replied to me, “I don’t think I’ll ever understand, but I’m happy you’ve found a way through this.” (not an exact quote)

I believe the person had good intentions when they wrote it, but honestly, it’s not the best thing to say to a trans person. We’re generally aware that cis people don’t “get us” and while you wish us well, being reminded of our outsider status, and cis people being weirded out by us is just not the best approach.

Please find a different way to verbalize your support. This particular approach is alienating, even though you had good intent. I know you were trying to be nice. Just do it differently in the future, OK?

That being said, would like to understand what I experience? It has been a kind of “side hobby” of mine across the years to enable cis people to understand what it feels like to be me. I haven’t been super successful but sometimes it works out. Sometimes.

I’ll try to give you window into my life.

The most direct approach is to give you an abstract understanding of what I experience. You won’t understand the actual subjective feel of what I experience but you can at least understand in a more removed, “intellectual” way.

The quickest approach is a list. Be aware that my experiences are uniquely my own and trans people experience “transness” in a variety of ways. I am but one person.

1) I felt a deep discord with my body in its original form, prior to medical transition (hormone replacement therapy and surgery). A masculine body felt completely wrong. That sense of discord was painful. Incredibly painful… to the point of being life threatening if something had not been done to rectify that discord.

2) I felt a deep affinity or emotional pull toward having a female form. When I saw other women/girls, there was a strong intuitive connection or knowing which gave me a feeling of “rightness” when imagining myself living in a body of female form.

3) The social identity of “male,” “boy,” and “man” never felt right. It felt awkward, painful, and ill fitting.

4) I felt a deep affinity or emotional pull toward having a female social identity. When I saw other women/girls, there was a strong intuitive connection or knowing which gave me a feeling of “rightness” when imagining myself living in a social identity of that nature.

When I experienced #2 and #4, imagining myself in a body and identity which truly fit, it was like hearing music which makes your emotions soar. The beauty and the harmony of it brought joy. The opposite experience brought pain and suffering.

That is the simplest, more linear explanation. It will give you a small taste of what I have experienced.

But it will probably still seem a bit alien for some, yes?

I have one another approach which has worked for a few cis people. They actually had an “ah ha” moment where they understood what I felt. Unfortunately, it only works for a select few because I have to reference a body of affective experience which not everyone has encountered in their lives.

Here goes…

Have you ever stood in a forest, or walked upon a mountain path, or sat by an ocean, or have spent time in some other natural setting, and you felt such a strong sense of connection with nature, with the life that is there, with the land, with everything around you… that you felt you could melt into your surroundings and become a part of it? Was that pull so strong, that you felt you never wanted to leave, that the land you were standing upon was a part of you, and the longing you felt to remain there took your breath away? It is a connection that is so deep and so profound, it is as though you can feel nature around you, permeating through your being? When you experience this, there is joy, a loss of self, and a presence of life which fills you. You have never felt this complete.

That connection is like love and a merging of being with nature itself.

Imagine that same depth of feeling, that same “melting into” sensation of love and connection…. But rather than being directed toward the land and the life that surrounds you, it is directed toward being female, toward women, and toward existing in female form and being. It is the exact same sense of connection that I feel toward nature, but instead, it is focused upon being female. I have experienced both and the emotions are identical.

That’s what being trans feminine feels like to me. If you have felt those feelings in nature, you know what I feel toward femaleness.

It’s utterly beautiful, and it takes your breath away. Once you have experienced that connection, it changes you. You can’t un-experience it. It’s always there within you, calling for you to return.

Of course, I don’t feel this strength of emotion 24/7. It comes from time to time and when it does, it’s beautiful. In most of life’s moments, you know the connection is still there but it is quiet, existing at a distance. One’s connection with nature never really goes away, just as that sense of connection with femaleness never goes away. The occasional moments of intensity you do experience are enough. They change you… forever.

Do you understand, now? Some of you might.

(But a reminder: These are my experiences alone. They do not necessarily represent what other trans people experience.)

Posted in Femininity, Gender, Gender Identity, LGBT, Spirituality, Trans Woman, Trans Women, Transgender

Friendship and Trust in a Field of Mines

•April 22, 2023 • Comments Off on Friendship and Trust in a Field of Mines
A sign on a post by a field of tall grass reads, "DANGER MINES"

This morning, I was reading something which reminded me of a sad reality that I never truly forget: there are many cis people, who might feign acceptance of me as a woman but who will always have that voice in the back of their heads which says, “Eh, on some level, ‘she’ isn’t really a she but I’ll humor ‘her’.”

I keep an emotional distance between myself and others for this reason.

I’m not sure why people bother to maintain contact with me who think this, because I can assure you, once I confirm that’s what you’re thinking, my response will be, “Fuck you. Good bye.”

I maintain thick emotional shielding around myself because I have to. This isn’t the world or the life I’d choose to live in, but I live here nevertheless. I take the defensive measures I need to survive cis people’s awfulness.

And so, I’m careful. I lend trust only when I’m fully confident that you have earned it. I lend emotional openness only after I have granted you my trust. I maintain distance, I maintain cover, and I observe… Until the time I am able to read you as a relatively safe person to be emotionally open to.

Unless I have granted you my trust, I keep a set of explosive bolts around our relationship that I will detonate if needed. I will let go of or our relationship if you give me reason to.

There are some people I have known for years, whom I have never fully trusted. They keep on tripping warning signals which indicate those explosive bolts are best left in place.

[sigh] I wish that I did not have to do these things. It is tiring. At times, it is lonely. But I see no indication in the (cis) world which indicates these measures are unnecessary. On the contrary, the times at hand call for deepening these measures.

Relationships with cis people are a field of hidden landmines of bigotry, placed beneath the surface, waiting for some unwitting pressure to trigger a detonation. Old wounds have taught me to tread through this field carefully. Often times, I walk around the field entirely, and I choose some other path.

I would rather be alone than in the company of deceptively friendly landmines.

Posted in Bigotry, Cissexism, Friendship, Gender, Relationships, Transgender, Transphobia

Meat, Masculinity, and the GOP

•April 19, 2023 • 1 Comment

A friend posted a link to this article in The New Republic today. As a topical cultural/political analysis of the politics behind weaponizing meat consumption as a culture war issue, it’s interesting.

https://newrepublic.com/article/171781/meat-culture-war-crickets

It’s a good article… BUT, I don’t think it goes deep enough. The cultural underpinnings of the hatred of vegetarianism on the right (and larger culture) are deeply tied to the way in which masculinity is constructed by usian society. The GOP might as well stand for Grand Old Patriarchy because, at its root, the political party worships and promotes white (cishet) male rule. The GOP’s core cultural identity is intimately entwined with the worst aspects of toxic masculinity and whiteness.

Put in a less snarky way, the GOP’s stock and trade is the promotion and maintenance of social hierarchy in all of its forms. It is a political party specifically geared toward openly promoting violent dominance and exploitation.

And I know this isn’t going to win me friends and influence, but (cis/white) masculinity is fundamentally entwined with promoting dominance and exploitation. I don’t think it has to be, or that this is inevitable, BUT that’s the way far too much of masculinity is currently constructed. I should know. Society tried its damnedest to brainwash me into internalizing this mode of being and I eventually ran from it like a burn victim runs from a blazing building.

Hey, let me give you a few specifics, alright?

Sadly, I was not brought up to value empathy toward others, human or non-human. From earliest years onward, I was trained by male age peers and by my father to see social interactions as a game of power and dominance. Every social interaction is an opportunity to define one’s power and standing in the social order. You look for the signs of weakness in your peers, you poke at those points of vulnerability, and you put others in their place. You do it first before they do it to you, and if they hit your vulnerable points first, you hit them harder.

Bullying wasn’t one or two children in the room against a single picked-on child. Low-level bullying was the primary mode of “friendly joshing” that boys did to each other on a daily basis as a manner of establishing social rank in the classroom and outside of school. Challenging comments and joking insults. Wrestling and punching your peers for fun on the floor. Practical jokes designed for the admiration and laughter of your peers, and the humiliation of your targets. Violence in seriousness and joviality. Wounds for power and honor. Boys will be boys. They’re just aggressive like that, right? (bullshit) This is certainly what a society based upon cis male rule wants you to believe.

And if you don’t go along with that training and those social expectations, you will branded as feminine, as gay, and as a girl. And no one want’s to be a girl, right? That’s the worst failure mode for being a male assigned person. (Personal irony intended.)

I sucked at this stupid, destructive social game but still, the system tried really, really hard to train me into it. If you push on an object hard enough for long enough, you’ll succeed at deforming it.

Fast forward to my later teen years.

We had guns. Ones that shot actual bullets.

I and my miscreant friends (who were actually the better kids in the neighborhood, believe it or not), would go out into the local woodlands, and search for animals to kill. Birds, squirrels, mice… if it moved and was within range, they were fair game. To us, they weren’t living feeling beings capable of suffering and pain. They were fun little targets that challenged our skill with our rifles. We laughed at their deaths. Well, some of us did. There were still parts of me, deep down, that saw the suffering we caused and cringed quietly. Don’t speak of those feelings aloud. Ignore them. Just… be one of the boys having fun at others’ expense. It doesn’t matter. Your friendship with your peers matters more, right? They’re just animals. They’re not important. (bullshit)

Here is the final message. The masculinity that I and my peers were brought up to embrace as healthy and normal, was centered upon establishing personal power in a larger system of social hierarchy. We were taught that feelings didn’t matter and others’ suffering didn’t matter when our position in a system of power was in question. Weakness was rightfully exploitable. Weakness was feminine. Femininity was inferior, and girls/women by extension, were inferior charges under our protection. Empathy was not a masculine enterprise. Empathy, or too much of it, was weakness. Caring about the suffering of others was always optional. Power matters more.

In this way of seeing the world, (non-human) animals do not matter. Women and girls do not matter either. They are all exploitable objects, under the rightful control of boys and men.

Any reaction against that system is seen as ludicrous. Vegetarianism is as laughable as feminism is. Both involve caring about animals, girls, and women too much. They are acts of relinquishing power over rightfully exploitable targets. Such behavior, by its very nature, is perceived as an act of weakness. It’s feminine. It’s inferior. If you go that route, you deserve a fist in your face…. Or worse.

Eating meat is, under patriarchy, an act of exerting one’s rightful power over that which does not deserve care and consideration. Eating meat is masculine and healthy. Animals are weaker, lesser beings, as are women and girls, and they are all under your rightful province of control.

I don’t believe that masculinity has to be constructed this way. I think this way of constructing masculinity is utterly poisonous and violent. It destroys the bearer, it destroys people around the bearer, and it destroys the world of the bearer. It is cold violence distilled into a personal ethic and code of “honor.” Sadly, this mode of masculinity is common, profoundly dangerous, and is one of many social constructs that form the very foundations and bones of a fascist social hierarchy. It permeates the society we live in. It is working in cooperation with other social forces to literally burn life off of the surface of the planet.

It is proudly worshiped by at least one of the united state’s political parties as a moral virtue. This is why the GOP portrays not eating meat as a failure mode for masculinity and society. At its roots, all of this is about patriarchy’s social hierarchy and the dominance behaviors which enforce it. Animals live near the bottom of that hierarchy. Eating them is an assertion of male power. The powerful consume the weak.

(I became a vegetarian in my late teens. As many of you know, I also ditched masculinity and male identity when I was 17. I had enough of the destructive mess I was brought up in, and I embraced being a transgender girl/woman, like a burn victim running from a blazing building. In my 20s, in another life as another person, I destroyed my rifle, sawing it into pieces and disposing of it, never wanting to touch a gun again.)

Posted in Bullying, Childhood, Childhood Abuse, Femininity, Feminism, Gender, Kyriarchy, Masculinity, Misogyny, Patriarchy, Toxic Masculinity, US Politics, Vegetarianism

To Not Lose Myself

•April 9, 2023 • Comments Off on To Not Lose Myself
a black and white image of a lone branch, denuded of leaves, jutting upward in a field of grass with a forest in the distance

These are terrible times for trans people. We live in a moment where our lives are characterized as distorted and vile. We are painted by many as despised products of cultural, emotional, and sexual degeneracy. At best, they portray us as onerously deluded, and at worst, violent and predatory.

Beyond ill sentiment, they also endeavor to erase us from existence. Their forces are gathering and prospects look grim.

The first wave of emotional reflex comes forth, striking out in anger and fear. I want them to know hurt and suffering. The same hurt and suffering they bring into our lives. Perhaps worse. Vengeance curdles in my veins. Let them bleed.

Let the whole species bleed. Bring it all to an end.

I am but one of a tiny percentage. They are most of the world, by far. Round up the percentages and extinguish us all. Humanity’s time has passed.

I am losing myself in their hatred and violence.

I am losing myself, and an unbidden transformation is awakening. I shudder and cry.

Time passes.

~~~~~

As I was lying awake in bed this morning, old memories stirred. In meditative reflection, I recalled my origins… I remembered a better, older side of myself…

It is trite—a timeworn cliché—but I was born of love. Contrary to the words of detractors, the female center of my being did not arrive from a genesis of sexual and emotional depravity. I came from a deep and enduring connection with what I understand to be life itself: turning, unfolding, ignition of being from spirit; chaotic birth and creation of living form across time and reality; knowing no end and knowing no beginning.

I understand that force as female. (Others understand it differently.) Within me, it takes form as a profound and undying connection with womanhood. It feels like love. It is love. Putting this into words feels like a cheapening of sentiment, but I have felt a love of femaleness, which has run to the core of my soul since I was a child. It is a love which permeates so deeply, I can not imagine living life in any way but in female form.

This is not delusion. This is not sexual depravity, nor is it predatory fantasy. It is love. It has always been love. I marvel at how the fear of some strives to transform profound beauty into a specter of sadness and evil. They understand so little. Their ignorance is a catalyst for terrible things.

And my reflexive fear of their fear threatens to distort and extinguish the love that is within me. To forget what it has taught me and what it has demanded of me. To turn away from a voice within that should matter more than all else.

I shudder against the blows of their hatred, hoping these ramparts of inner being hold.

I wonder if I know how to survive in this world, carved by the cold hand of humanity’s worst instincts?

How do I stand firm against their perversity?

I do not want to lose myself in their hatred of me. This would be the last and final erasure, and I refuse this destruction of self. There are some losses that are worse than death.

Posted in Bigotry, Cissexism, Femininity, Gender, LGBT, Pagan, Paganism, Queer, Spirituality, Trans Women, Transgender
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My Beliefs as a Pagan, Part 1: An Agnostic Ethic

•September 3, 2015 • 5 Comments

agnosticI’m planning on posting several entries on my blog delineating my beliefs. In this first post of the series, I will describe my approach to agnosticism.

Most people define agnosticism as either a state of not being fully certain about one’s beliefs given the available evidence, or they define agnosticism as a state of uncertainty which runs so deep that formulating a belief is not possible. For example, a person who is an agnostic theist believes that evidence indicates the existence of a god is likely but they are not fully certain of this existence. A person who is purely agnostic and neither theist nor atheist would assert that they can not take a position on the existence or non-existence of gods because they do not feel there is enough information to formulate a position.† An agnostic atheist believes that evidence indicates the existence of god is unlikely but they are not fully certain of this non-existence.

Simply put, I am an agnostic pagan. I am not certain that my particular cosmological perspective is accurate. Consequently, I am open to the possibility that I might be wrong in my understanding and analysis of my spiritual experiences. I believe that I have no way of truly being certain, ever. My limitations as a human being tend to favor cosmological questions remaining within the realm of mystery and the unknown. My perspective is birthed at the confluence of spiritual experience and guesswork interpretation. What beliefs I build upon that confluence are speculation and I accept that.

For me, agnosticism takes on an additional dimension beyond a component of uncertainty in my cosmological perspective. My agnosticism also includes a set of behavioral standards which governs how I interact with perspectives that are different from mine and how I interact with the people who hold them. In other words, my agnosticism includes an ethic which guides my interactions with others whose spiritual paths differ from mine. My approach, ideally, is one of reserve, respect, empathy, and humbleness. I’m am not a cosmological exclusivist. I accept that others have very different beliefs from mine and that those beliefs might be as valid or more valid than mine. I am not a repository for the universe’s secrets and I refuse to behave as one.

My reasons for this ethic are threefold. First, if I can’t be certain my cosmological perspective is accurate, how can I truly be certain that someone else’s perspective is inaccurate? Put another way, I approach these issues as one small human being who’s scope of perception and knowledge is limited and consequently, much of my understanding of these esoteric matters is simply guesswork. If I’m running on guesswork, what right do I have to dismiss another person’s perspective out of hand? We both have our strengths, weaknesses, differing sources of information, differing experiences and so on. Second, from personal experience, I know that a person’s experience with spirituality and the cosmology that informs it, are often very personal in nature. These perspectives can be rich, deeply emotional, deeply intuitive experiences that run down to the core of a person’s being. Such experiences come with a deep degree of emotional vulnerability and I do not wish to tread upon and harm that vulnerability. Third, I embrace treating others with the same kindness and respect that I wish to be treated with. Having someone verbally tear apart something that is so integral to my sense of being is deeply off-putting if not painful. I wouldn’t want to visit that experience on another person. Because of these considerations, my agnosticism requires that I approach a person of different cosmology with care and respect. These understandings, commitments, and acknowledgments form the core of my agnostic ethic.

My decision to formulate and embrace this ethic was motivated by witnessing far too much hatred, prejudice, and dehumanization being exchanged between various communities of differing cosmologies and religions. There is far too much tribalism in the world, sourced from many factors. While there are indeed different levels of power and privilege accorded by group, and that difference governs how negatively one is impacted by conflict, our universal humanness too often leads to the fanning of glowing tribal embers on all sides. Innocence is a state rarely maintained. Bringing relief to this fiery entanglement and coping with the downside of our humanness starts with oneself. Derision, condescension, patronizing language, and other forms of unkindness rarely fail to accelerate tribal conflagrations and so, I embrace an agnostic ethic.

† Note: At some point in recent history, people collapsed the position of pure agnostic into atheism because they claim that pure agnostics hold no belief in gods. However, the pure agnostic does not feel they can take a position on the god question and hence, to say they are an atheist is not accurate because theism and atheism represent distinct positions on the god question. Theists and atheists represent a yes/no response, respectively. The pure agnostic says, “I don’t know.” rather than yes or no. I see this collapsing of the pure agnostic and atheist positions as nothing more than a political stratagem crafted to increase polarization on the god question. “You are either with them or us. There is no in between. Choose a side.” This is designed to obscure and/or discourage neutrality on the issue. You can see this tendency in evidence when people dismiss pure agnostics as cowards unwilling to take a side.

On a personal note, I’m always disappointed in seeing people collapse a varied and diverse spectrum of possibilities into a simplistic binary. People do this with gender and sexual orientation, too and it’s very saddening. It draws lines right across the middle of people’s lives. It’s a very hurtful practice for those who do not live on the binary.

Posted in Agnosticism, Atheism, Paganism, Religion, Spirituality
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Cultural Conformity: Many Brands, Fancy Packaging, and Similar Unhealthy Ingredients

•August 10, 2015 • Comments Off on Cultural Conformity: Many Brands, Fancy Packaging, and Similar Unhealthy Ingredients

CrapBurgerOn many occasions, I’ve heard conservative Christians make the claim that atheism has Christianity to thank for many of the ethics, values, and cultural patterns New Atheists promote and take for granted.  That always used to make my fur bristle because Christianity has a habit of trying to take credit for nearly everything people praise as the more positive aspects of Western culture.

The reality is though, Christianity has enjoyed a cultural hegemony in the West for many centuries, and as such, it has influenced Western culture deeply.  That cultural hegemony is a consequence in no small part, of a missionary zeal to spread the cultural seeds of its beliefs to the far corners of the planet.  The body count of that zeal is written upon some of the bloodiest chapters of human history.  The destruction of indigenous peoples in continents outside of Europe, the exploitation of their land and resources, the eradication of their cultures… all of that rides on the shoulders of Christianity’s long history of destructive missionary projects.  Those projects, which center upon spreading Eurocentric culture across the globe, haven’t died and haven’t slowed down, not even with the increasing secularization of the West.  Those responsible for continuing this endeavor may change faces as responsibility shifts hands but the project remains nevertheless.

The thing about oppression and its many forms is this: they have a tendency to shapeshift and be reborn from one generation to the next.  We think we have rid ourselves of our grandparents’ shameful flaws when in reality, we embody and reproduce those flaws in abundance, and we fail to recognize those patterns, reborn in a guise which eludes our vision.

This pattern takes many forms and one of those forms has nestled comfortably in the culture war taking place between Christianity and New Atheism.  In many ways, they are mortal enemies.  Peer beneath the surface though, and this distinction becomes muddled.

I have noticed this similarity:

  • Conservative Christian apologists craft defenses for patriarchal religion, the Western Eurocentric culture that was founded on it, and the project of spreading that culture globally.
  • New Atheist apologists craft defenses for the Enlightenment, the Western Eurocentric culture that was fundamentally influenced by it, and the project of spreading that culture globally.

It’s interesting how one is derivative of the other and yet, neither group of people will fully admit how their histories and preferred modes of cultural colonialism are so deeply mirrored and intertwined.

New Atheism often portrays itself as a kind of cultural savior, spreading secular freedom across the globe and pushing back the “barbarism” of pre-rational religion, but as time has passed I have noticed that New Atheism’s drive to spread itself reminds me of Christianity’s evangelical mission to bring the globe in line with its cultural tenets.  Christianity has and still does view itself as a primary civilizing force in the world, opposing what it views as “backwards primitive” cultures.

These similarities are hardly coincidental.  New Atheism was born in the cultural cradle of the Christian West. The West’s tendency to see itself as the moral guardian of the world, especially in the form of US exceptionalism, is a cultural byproduct of Christianity’s Great Commission.  We in the West have a tendency to see ourselves as superior and we believe our purpose and mission is to “gift” the world with our supposedly superior ways.  At its heart, this attitude is a colonialist mindset, embedded with racism and brimming with global ambitions.  New Atheism was born under the influence of this exceptionalist mindset and it continues the project of a racist cultural colonialism just as Eurocentric Christianity has for ages.  They are both delivery systems for cultural domination and ultimately, they serve as an avenue for the exploitation of those outside of white-dominated Western countries.

The thing to keep in mind is that capitalism functions far more efficiently in a global monoculture.  Capitalism will tend to favor and promote institutions that help it promote its reach.  The Great Commission of Christianity is well suited for this task, as is the self-promoting Western ethnocentrism of New Atheism.   It is easier to market and sell products to a world if it shares the same values, beliefs, tastes, and ways of doing things.  It is also far easier to exploit labor forces and natural resources on a global scale if the world’s nations share similar economic systems and values—values which align with the ambitions of capitalism.  Both New Atheism and conservative Christianity serve as unwitting allies in the project of spreading cultural conformity in service to the global marketplace.  Even if religion were to disappear tomorrow, the keys of the kingdom would be handed to the corporate aristocracy of a newborn secularism.  One thing is certain: money will bear the imprint of whatever emperor mints it.

So the question is, do your prefer colonialism with the face of a white European Jesus, Halliburton, and McDonald’s, or the face of Sam Harris, Raytheon, and Coke?  Either way, their revolution will be televised.

Posted in Antitheism, Atheism, Capitalism, Christianity, Colonialism, Cultural Conformity, Imperialism, Racism, US Exceptionalism
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A Quick Note: No Cosmological Solicitation, Please

•August 6, 2015 • Comments Off on A Quick Note: No Cosmological Solicitation, Please

solictors will be eatenIf you read my previous post, you’ll notice that I feel a degree of anger toward some parts of the atheist community.  I don’t feel that way toward all atheists, or even most atheists.  However, my stumbling block is with a certain brand of hard-edged antitheism: the kind that dismisses spiritual and/or religious people as overly-emotional, unthinking, or vacuous—the kind that tends to stereotype all spirituality or religion as a root of social dysfunction and oppression.  In other parlance, one would refer to this approach as a form of religious (or non-religious) supremacy.  I’m not much for religious supremacy of any type, whether it’s based upon a belief or non-belief in deities.

Having said this, I need to emphasize that I don’t like being proselytized to.  Proselytizing is a form of talking at a person rather sharing of oneself with another human being.  Please don’t write comments on this blog that are attempts to convert me to your particular understanding of cosmology.  I am not interested in the rhetorical equivalent of leaving behind virtual copies of The Watchtower or The God Delusion.  Whether your sales pitch is Christian, Atheist, or some other cosmology, I’m not interested in non-religious/religious solicitors.

Please skip my blog and knock on the next virtual door.

Thanks in advance for respecting my boundaries.

Posted in Antitheism, Atheism, Dogmatism, House Rules, Religion, Religious Bigotry, Spirituality, Supremacy
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