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The column

  • Posted on September 15, 2012 at 8:50 am

There was once a beautiful domed space, full of light, airy and welcoming. Everyone who visited it liked it, remembered it and found it a safe place with always-open doors. It had withstood time well, weathered, mellowed and strong. As you entered, there was a peace, but it was a working space, and alive.

One thing marked it out, that after a while became less a wonder, more a curiosity. Attractive in its own way, it nevertheless got a bit in the way, like being stuck in a church or the wrong seat of the theatre, leaning this way and that to see. It cast shadows in strong light, came between people, and in the end was protected, lest the wear and tear of time and touch constantly coming in from outside should weaken it. Circled at first with a polite rope, then with outward-facing chairs like the bench around a village tree, it was almost venerated. It was an upstanding testament to strength and endurance.

This single alabaster column was the central feature, well-polished, reaching to the top of the dome, supporting the tracery that allowed so much light to stream in. It stood alone and strong, making the whole place safe. Every day its owner and occupant would sweep carefully around the base, replace the chairs, maybe sit down a while, secure.

Then one day (as in all stories like these) a stranger arrived, looked around, tilted her eyebrows and disappeared. A short while later, the owner clattered the dustpan in the bin, downed the broom, and sat, back to the column, in a stream of sunlight.

‘Why?’

A soft voice from behind repeated the question.

‘Why?’

The owner turned, but only saw the white, shiny, beautiful, familiar column.

‘Who’s there?’

Strange voices in familiar places are unnerving. The owner turned to the left, but when they turned back, an elegant woman was already quietly seated, eyes resting on the sunlit floor.

‘The column.’ she said. ‘Why the column?’

The owner’s eyebrows knitted a moment, puzzled at such a naïve question.

‘It holds the dome up. Without it, under its own weight, or the wind, the dome might fall in. And then there would be less light, I would fear the rain at night, and it would be cold!’

The woman raised her eyes to the dome, to the slender balcony running around its widest point.

‘Have you ever been up there?’ she asked, quietly. ‘I’m an engineer, so I can’t help myself! And when I came in just now, I was really curious.

‘You see, as I stepped inside, I was in a shadow, so all I saw was the white column, and then the sound of the place made me look up and see the wonderful dome you have. The place didn’t seem to be in disrepair, so the column clearly wasn’t a later addition. It was almost as if the place was built around it.’

She paused.

‘And so I went exploring, found the little tower and spiral stairs, and went up there.’

There was silence. The woman was not about to continue. It was as if her explanation was sufficient in its incompleteness. There was more; but the importance of it was not for her. She could wait, or she could leave, because she understood, and that was all that mattered. The sun turned, the shadow followed, like the hand of an enormous sundial marked on the wall. Eventually, the woman calmly rose, hitched her bag.

‘I must be going.’

The owner, confused now, protested. ‘I don’t understand …’

‘The stairs,’ the woman replied, looking her directly but kindly in the eyes. ‘You must climb the stairs. You may understand, but you must see for yourself.’ And she was gone.

Sometimes you wish strangers wouldn’t enter. Sometimes you wish they wouldn’t leave. And sometimes you just don’t know. The owner found the stairs, just one set of footprints in the dust, going up, coming down. The steps were unworn, but dark, and it was easy to become a little dizzy. Then light, gleaming from above, from the dome – and out onto a very narrow, very scary balcony with just the dome arching majestically from behind, up and over, its stone beams wider than they ever seemed from the ground. Strong, yet light; robust and with a detail never seen against the light.

The alabaster column rose like an eternal tree to its centre. Its top, too high to see, was fuzzy around the edges with the dust of years, the one part of it not shiny in the light. The dome arched over it, around it, but not touching it. The majestic white pillar of grandeur, so protected, so central, so essential – was a monument only to itself.

The elegant woman engineer never returned. Somewhere, the owner imagined, she would be lying full out under some light-filled dome, staring up into some wonderful, inspiring and free space, worshiping the arch, the dome, the perfectly spread load, the strong appearing so fragile.

As time passed by (as it does in stories like these), the chairs were displaced and the curiosity of the column became an annoyance. Research didn’t appear to give it an importance or a protection, and without notability, it became just an obstacle. And for anyone who asked why, there was never really a convincing answer, just a faith. But it was familiar, and if the owned kept moving around, there would always be a place in the sun.

All the owner needed was someone to sit down with them; someone who would look up, and see a magnificent alabaster column supporting a fragile dome, and feel safe.

Or trust. And a demolition team for a few hours to safely take the column away.

 

The worst part of stories like these is that they have a moral. Maybe a beautiful dome won’t fall in by pulling down a central pillar. It’s about daring to wipe your finger on the top, and convincing yourself that what you thought held everything together wasn’t quite what it seemed. It all depends on which is the more important: a pillar that looks important, or the freedom to gaze upwards in wonder, freedom and light. Belief – or trust.

Just thinking …

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Friendship: welcome to the world of women

  • Posted on September 8, 2012 at 7:44 am

This is what a friend said to me recently. The context was friendships. She also said ‘the men don’t know what they’re missing!’ This is a time when I am realising that things really are different. The pressure is off relationships meaning too much, or suggesting the wrong things simply by being close. Maybe it’s a lot to do with the anti-androgens, but it is blessed relief in some ways, because depths to friendship are safe and unambiguous. The way I can relate to, talk to, share with other women, is one of the best supports that I have right now, and I really value it.

Today I shall view a couple of flats, looking for an affordable place to rent that will provide enough space and light to make a new start. I never had to think of that before. Every place I’ve viewed to buy for 30 years, seven times, has been a shared decision, a balance of preferences and vision of making a place home. They were never new starts, just mostly little steps up the property ladder. This one is down; quite a long way down! But it has made me reflect, prepare and adjust. What am I doing?

If I was a man leaving his wife, the conversations would be very different. But then men don’t do that much, unless one he or she is having an affair, or is being violent in some way. There has to be a big reason, otherwise food on the table and a free laundry service outweigh the benefits of really discovering themselves. Maybe that’s a bit unfair, but I think I have some inside track on this one!

I feel much more like a wife leaving: because the relationship is no longer doing what it should, and it is compromising my sense of self. Not my independence, not freedom to have an affair without guilt, not even an imbalance of contribution really. No, I am going with confidence that I can live my life better on my own and see where that leads me. I was here to be loved and to love, to give as much as to receive, and the transactions are now very limited. Have you ever been in an anechoic chamber? Maybe at least you’ve seen pictures of rooms without windows, completely lined with thousands of grey foam pyramids or cones. They are places where there must be no resonance, no echoes or reflections, so that the one source of sound can be isolated with clarity. It’s a bit like that. I am not in a silent place, but even my own sounds of love have stopped bouncing back. Sensory deprivation is a frighteningly uncomfortable experience.

I am leaving for somewhere probably quite small, and I try not to think of it too much as I run up and down stairs or out into the garden. But it will be a place where friends will come and that will echo again with the happiness of free association. Was writing that last phrase a Freudian slip? Wikipedia describes the purpose of free association as: ‘… not to unearth specific answers or memories, but to instigate a journey of co-discovery which can enhance the patient’s integration of thought, feeling, agency, and selfhood.’ Sounds about right to me.

I also feel that reverting-to-type thing coming on. If I was the husband leaving, I would recreate a bachelor pad, take the hurt out by eradicating feminine memories, show my blokeishness as a marker of availability. But no, my reversion-to-type has brought a wonderful realisation that I can have a really pretty bedroom for the first time, and things on my shelves that are a bit more girly than I would have had otherwise. A kind of femininity that is perhaps better expressed on its own, rather than competing in some way. My new space will resonate with my gender for the first time in my life.

And I may build furniture. I will know how to mend things, and fix a dripping tap; I will understand the fabric of my space as well as the spirit of it. I will worry as much about where to store my toolboxes as my cosmetics, and there will be growing redundancy from living in a maintained place where I don’t have to worry about the roof. It feels kind of wholesome when I think of it like that.

And it will be a space where all my girl friends will feel welcome, where ‘would you like to come in for a coffee?’ will have no overtones, and where stories will be told, and tears shed, and deeper friendships will evolve. It will be a space where I shall at times feel incredibly lonely, but nevertheless safe in my independence with friends. I’ve been welcomed into the world of women, to learn how women can be treated, spoken to, sometimes disregarded, become aware of a certain concession given by men, and learn new friendships that are protective, more mutual, more understanding. Welcome to the world of women.

The men don’t know what they’re missing. I am a woman who is moving on, not moving out.

Postscript: as I posted this entry and tagged it up for the search engines, I looked at the cloud of tags I’ve used so far, and realised I was having to add new ones, and that I was leaving some big ones behind. I hope this is a good sign! The friendship tag I think will be used a lot more.

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Of sadness and light

  • Posted on August 31, 2012 at 11:37 pm

Only a few times in my life have I reached the very depths of sadness. Today I’m distinguishing it from grief. Grief is loss and coming to terms – a process. Sadness is not always loss; rather it is when the mismatch between what you hope at your best has no bearing on how life presents itself to you. But somehow it is drained by expressing it. You can fill and empty all over again, of course, but somehow it gets flushed out by glimmers of hope, as if the sadness is darkness and hope is light. And yes, you can get to like sadness as an attractor for sympathy, and refuse the light, but light overcomes darkness in a way darkness can never overcome light.

A glimmer reminded me in my deepest sadness, and it was enough for me to see what I must do, what I could hope, and what I must trust for as an outcome in a dark place.

I thought today that if I were to have written my story as it really began to take form eighteen months ago, I would not have believed it. I wouldn’t have welcomed it either because of that. And if I wrote it now, a lot of people would say I had idealised it, shortened it to make it fit, that it wasn’t quite real enough. I have often said I have been incredibly lucky. A lot of people say I have shown a lot of courage. Maybe neither is true. As it happens I am atheist with a strong belief that this life is connected with all life outside of this time scheme, and that sometimes things work well here, that people meet here, because of that connection and the coherence of all life. I don’t find a reason or grand purpose, and I don’t find destiny; I just find the connection, the absence of clear boundaries. Quite a mess of thought really, with tinges of Buddhism and Bohm&#8217s implicate order. I must read more about both and much in between.

And so it is that I have sometimes remarked that it has been as if someone were holding my hand. And that if there is any purpose at all in my deepest sadness, it must be because someone, somewhere, needs me to be free again, so that I can give myself freely once more. That someone needs the kind of love I can give, and needs it to be freely available. It’s the end of giving that hurts most right now, and for now I must learn that profound giving is too precious to be assumed as to where it is needed.

Every step along my eighteen-month journey thus far has been a falling into place, and every time I have held a fear of the impossibility of the next step, my foot has found firm ground. It isn’t so for everyone, and it isn’t because I’m thick skinned, wealthy, connected or anything else. It is just the way it has been for me. It is time to step forward now in this new way of life, and to stop feeling anything is happening to me. Nothing has happened to me thus far, I have simply responded as best I could to each prompting for the next step. And my sadness has been at times simply due to taking too long a pause to look back, or fearing some sword of Damocles will cut yet more away. You know those moments in films, as when our hero stops and looks back in their escape and you are screaming at them ‘No! Move on while you can! The bridge is about to collapse!’ The best action is positive, decisive and owned.

I am responsible for my life. Where I am now is entirely my responsibility. So too is where I am next. And no, I am not running away from anything, only towards where the next coming-together will be.

Is someone holding my hand? Well, maybe that’s too individual and personal for what I really mean. But it would be nice to know! Because some things ahead of me seem like dark and very lonely spaces where I must first go before I find out where it leads. My image is the cave diver who must head into a dark narrow passageway full of water, and the only way is through. No turning, rising, pausing, room for one only, until the crystal cavern is lit by their lamp as they emerge, relieved but completely awed.

Right now I am diving and holding my breath.

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What am I? A riddle

  • Posted on August 25, 2012 at 7:57 am

If you were to catch me at night, between clothes, you would see a male body and short grey hair. You wouldn’t see a man’s body, because it isn’t owned by a man. Ironically, you would see a woman’s body that doesn’t look female. But if you could look inside, beneath the skin, you would see me; I would be her. Close your eyes and hold me, and what would you feel? The gentleness of a woman, or the hard reality of the body? What might you kiss, a male mouth or another woman’s kiss in return?

I am like a classic ancient riddle, where a series of intriguing statements can be made, apparently paradoxical, but true. And when you hear the punch line it all makes sense; cue applause at the cleverness of it. I know, riddles were used by jesters to tell awkward truths to monarchs. Am I the Joker, or the Riddle? (And if you’re a Batman fan, stop right there! Batman just gives me the creeps.)

Living with this paradox is no joke though. If I asked people ‘What am I?’ they would be polite, telling me I am a woman, of course. That’s lovely, but since I need the love of a woman, does that make me lesbian? In other words, does it actually change anything about me, or does it just correct that much-needed label? Last blog I wrote of labels being tickets. Where does this one let me in?

Ask another person in the shadow of the wings, offstage for a moment, and they might say ‘He’s a man who wants to be a woman.’ They would be trying to be honest about what they see. They may be kindness itself, but it wouldn’t change their label. Where would this ticket let me in?

My ticket, or label, says neither ‘Stalls’ nor ‘Grand Circle’. I am not a man; no, really. I am not really a woman, because I have a male body, albeit subtly changing. I am not hetero, because I am not a man, I am not gay, because I am not a man, and no, I am not attracted to men. I am not lesbian, because I do not have a female body, and I am not bisexual. But I still yearn for the understanding love of a woman, and to love a woman with understanding. What? Because she is a woman? No; because she is not a man. But could a woman love me because I am not a man?

Catch me at night, between clothes, and tell me: ‘What am I?’ Maybe you find out by touching me. Do I change you? If you hold me, and I am a man, does that alter what you are? If you hold me and you experience a woman’s embrace, does that change you? If I change you, and it is because of what I am, not who I am, does that help you decide: ‘What am I’? What would you say I need, if I am not to change the other person by sharing love?

The answer to what I am, is someone, just a person, in a transition that will never be perfect, that will always be a patch, a substitute, but with which I am immeasurably more comfortable. Maybe I don’t need ‘a woman’s love’ at all. I just need a person’s love, who can see the male/female paradox, but experience me as a woman, without that changing them.

This is all terribly personal, and it is about what I am feeling inside. I know plenty of other trans* people who have no paradox: they are 100 percent the gender they express, and the rest is just a biological disaster from birth. I respect that. Just as I respect those who can live and express alternately their male side and their female side, whatever the stronger preference may be. I know where I need to be; my life now is as a woman, unequivocally, while not denying that I still have male aspects, like everyone else. This is not about being definitive or setting a paradigm, nor about any particular person in relation to me. It is just my personal paradox, which I may never resolve. Unlabelled, unticketed, unaccessed …

What am I?

I am just a person who wants to be loved for who they are. Completely. For being wholly strange, yet strangely whole. I want to be riddled with love again.

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Trans Siberian Dissident

  • Posted on August 12, 2012 at 10:33 am

There’s always a lot of talk about LGBT (GBLT or whatever – never TBLG) and whether it is coherent. It doesn’t cater for asexuals or pansexuals, which is odd, because on the face of it, it is all about sexuality. I suppose the reason is that these groups are much less visible and distinctive. But what is shared is societal attitudes to sex. Or gender. Maybe. In fact it isn’t about gender at all, it’s about rejecting people for being different in regards their non-heterosexuality. It is about equality for sexual dissidents, not in specific acts, but in eligibility. It’s about not exiling people who don’t fit the cultural regime into a place apart. Gay and lesbian people (and more as a consequence than deliberation, bi) used to have their own Siberia but, long before it was recognised that a province of that Siberia also held people who were transgender, they were allowed back.

Why did the ‘T’ people not come back with them?

The grounds of dissent are different. LGB folk were not dissenting about gender, but in a way were affirming the gender binary state, simply asserting that binary did not mean polarity. Trans* people are still out there in various forms of exile, dissidents of the binary state.

I do sympathise. I mean, how can we know where we are if we can’t label each other correctly, even with the addition of LGB? You’re a lesbian. OK, so you’re a woman, I can go with that. You’re male bisexual? OK, so you’re a man. I can go with that. You’re intersex? You prefer women as sexual partners … Oooo Kaaay. Right. So you’re male intersex, is that right? What? You identify as lesbian? And you’re not a woman? What shall I put on your tax form? Best put male, that way at least we go with your birth certificate and save a bit on the pension.

Yes, there is a real cruelty for intersex people, for whom gender decisions are often made at birth by people who have no idea what the person’s true gender is. And they get it wrong. And LGB tags don’t get them out of Siberia. It does not make them asexual or any less in need of love and intimacy. It just exiles them from most people, because the gender binary is so ingrained as an affirmation of other people’s own legitimacy.

Born that way, trying it out, deciding

These days we accept that people are born to be gay or lesbian, in the same way that birth assigns others to being intersex. It is not a state of mind, a disorder or a psychological aberration. The same is not generally held to be true of trans* people. In the same way that huge numbers of hetero people experiment with gay or lesbian relationships, so there are many people loosely under the trans* flag, for whom clothing, as an expression of fluidity, is a way of testing just how binary the world has to be. And the world notices, sometimes harshly, the lesbian who dates a man, or the man who wears a dress.

But they can all find where they belong, and settle back into acceptability within a gender binary culture. Just decide, then it won’t matter, because there will always be someone for you: another lesbian, gay or bi person who appreciates the sex of your body, and if it’s just your clothes at least we know what’s underneath. But how could anyone appreciate the sex of your body – male, female, intersex, transitional – without it affecting their sense of sexuality? No-one, in a binarist culture.

Out there in Trans Siberia, there are dissidents. It’s called internal exile. Same nation, but disqualified from full participation.

Some will come home as women, some as men, but while they are trans, it’s cold, and they stay where they are. Sometimes they hug each other for warmth, because no-one else will, except out of charity, or because they are an exotic accessory. But while they remain in a body developed by the wrong hormones for their heart and soul, they remain firmly gender dissidents (Kate Borstein’s term is gender outlaw, and I wouldn’t want to steal her thunder).

Being exiled

Tickets, anyone? All aboard the Tran-Siberien railway.Imagine the Trans Siberian dissident on the day of exile. That final moment when sentence is passed, and it is decided: as far as we are concerned, you are neither a man nor a woman. You betray all sexual preferences, you confuse everyone, you break apart what we know to be right. You are now disqualified from being heterosexual, from being gay or lesbian. You must become asexual until you conform. And besides, how can we know how to tax you if we can’t decide what you are? We do not have the right forms for people like you; the cost of changing our tick boxes is too high. You can call yourself what you like, but just look at you. We know you aren’t one of us.

And the day after exile? I cannot embrace you. You are a dissident, and what you call yourself is no longer what I want, because to want you would make me something I don’t identify as. Never mind yesterday, your sentence changes how I can touch and interact with you. I understand that you are no longer qualified to have a legitimate sexuality label, that you are in exile from all intimacy, that everyone will say the same, except maybe your fellow dissidents in Trans Siberia. Can’t you find one of them to love you?

Yes, Trans Siberia is a place even those closest to you will send you. Some maintain a correspondence, but can no longer relate you as they did. Your dissidence disqualifies you from all the things to do with love and intimacy that conforming gender binary people take for granted. You really are not wanted for a having a body developed by hormones that your heart and soul did not choose. This is exile. And even if you come back ‘corrected’ into gender conformance you are not ‘real’ to everyone. You are the man/woman who used to be a woman/man. And if you don’t conform, you stay in exile.

LGB people are no longer dissidents in this country, but they recognise that those in other countries are still persecuted and exiled and killed. They know Siberia exists. But all too often there is an LGB Siberia and a Trans Siberia that hardly recognise they are neighbours.

Ticket or label?

I am a dissident. I have no idea what my labels should be. As far as I am concerned I am a woman, with a body developed by testosterone. The repairs will take the rest of my life in some ways. And I love a woman and have no attraction to men. Am I lesbian? Well, that depends on who lets me in. Some radical feminists will never admit trans women are women at all, so as far as they are concerned, I am not a man, not a woman and certainly never a lesbian. I am an exile. And normal, hetero women? Again, I am not a man, they understand I identify as a woman, and they want a ‘real’ man or a ‘real’ woman, because anything else threatens to change their label.

I am reminded of all those pictures of evacuees, of lonesome children, perhaps in their best clothes, with a suitcase. With a label. Like luggage. Is this their ticket to a safe place? Or just a label? What would happen if you dared to take it off? Would you get lost or left behind, or forget who you were or where you belonged?

We think our labels are tickets. Tickets that will give us entrance, acceptance, permission and identity. No-one wants to give up their label in case they lose their ticket to wherever it may be. I think this is a terrible misconception. I have no label anymore, so the ticket inspectors won’t let me in. I am an exile. And all the other ticket-holders in line look blankly at me. If they let me in, it would invalidate their tickets, their right to stand in line. To become the person who drops their ticket, leaves the line, and completely embraces the exile? Surely that would mean exile too; at least exile from self.

I am not in line. I am a Trans Siberian Dissident, in exile from intimacy. I tore my label up so you can’t read it, because it wasn’t right. And you don’t need it either. How much do you really need yours? Is it a label? Is it your ID card? Is it your ticket? Is it your vote for Trans Siberia?

Don’t get me wrong, the sun shines in Trans Siberia, and those of us there would rather be there than anywhere else that would require us to lose our self-identity. For many of us it is a rebirth, and a really wonderful experience. But it does lack a certain intimacy, a certain inclusion, a certain belonging among everyone else. We just want to be loved for who we are. Completely.

 

Disclaimer: as always this isn’t just about me, I am trying to voice what I know other trans* people experience too. And it isn’t despair, because I know there are trans* people out there with wonderful loving partnerships. But every day I also read the notes of many exiles who are less fortunate in finding love, and the root of it all is the cultural concept of binary gender and its impact on our sense of sexuality.

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