Variation

Much trans discourse arises from oppression. When I first came across other trans women in the 1990s, all pre-transition, I heard of The Script, what we had to tell the psychiatrists. “I knew there was a problem when I was three, and I knew what it was when I was five. Puberty was disorientating and distressing for me. At school, I could not understand why the girls were affirmed for certain behaviours, but I was condemned.” Actually that last bit is a quote from someone who, I think, meant it in all simplicity, but it would have been a fib for me. We told them that so we would get what we wanted.

Finding it unbearable to present male, even in a bigoted environment where I had to move house because local kids scratched and dented my car and abused me in the street, I retreated to the box marked “transsexual” and the understanding my culture has of it. I sought more to convince myself than others that I was not mad to do this, that it was not a perverted fantasy, that I could really do what I Wanted, just because I Wanted it. I did this in part with arguments about the BSTc which may not even apply to me. When I realised I did not really fit that box marked “transsexual”, that was a reason for me not doing what I wanted- I must be deluded.

The Gender Recognition Act, under which I have an extract birth certificate giving my sex as female, was a wonderful liberation for me. I felt accepted and supported by the law of my country in doing what I had done. Accepting my own transition, presenting female, liberated me to go further. The first symptom of this was resenting the classification. Under the previous law, I was called a “man” (Corbett v Corbett, orse. Ashley) and now I was labelled “woman”. Those were the choices. I am really something in between. Given what I had wanted, I could now rebel against that too.

A further liberation comes from the concept of “Variation”, for which I am endebted to L’Organisation Internationale des Intersexué-e-s in Australia via Angela Erde’s comment. It liberates me from the need to justify to my inner policeman how I behave. An Episcopalian priest discerned in me the desire to “shock”, but really I wanted to shock myself- the Variant part of me wanted to shock the timid, conventional part of me.

I care about how others react to me. There are some who are simply hostile, because of their own hang-ups, to anyone who is not “normal”. Others, though, may take their lead from me- if I can gentle away my own fears, and accept my variation and my spontaneity, they will too. They will be as comfortable with me as I am. This is the working theory, anyway. Alternatively, they are always comfortable with me, and it is only my projection of my own discomfort. Right now I do not know which.

The word “Variation” also helps to free me from being hurt by hate-filled Radfem nonsense about how trans women oppress real women, etc. They may express opinions about what I do, but they have no right to judge who I am.

There are still boxes and classifications which I might find useful: neutrois, for example, or trans*. However, these are now opportunities rather than traps: I see what is possible, and expand my awareness of the range of choices, rather than beat myself up because I do not fit. I have done enough of that. After struggling for so long to be something else, I now struggle to release my bonds of fear, so that I may be only me.

Picture credit: the Folio Society.

Believe in America!

I believe in America. I’ve seen it on satellite photos and heard Aaron Copland’s music. People whom I trust say they have been there. Apart from a vacuous slogan, the man most likely to come second in November has some vacuous beliefs.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.

Mr Romney’s own website shows that he has worked hard to oppose marriage equality. This is not a religious freedom issue. Conservatives do not have to call the union of two women a “marriage”. They do not have to make friends with those women, or let them attend their church. But they do not have the right to prevent us from celebrating and naming our unions. Your freedom to swing your fist ends at my face, and it really irks me when you start to whine that your fist hurts after hitting me. And I am perplexed that he would so badly misunderstand what judges do.

I am glad he is standing, though. Were it not for that, I would not have heard about temple garments. I have had other moments of shocked derision because the serious press is paying attention to Mormonism.

Shocked derision is my constant reaction more generally. Newt wants a moonbase by 2020, and his supporters cheered: why bother? You’re on another planet already. I have heard various excuses for this. The President as an embodiment of the Nation has to pretend to be an ordinary man. The constitution, as a way of getting Government out of the faces of citizens, elects second raters.

What does Newt have to say about marriage equality?

[gay marriage is] a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors

Sounds reasonable. I like paganism, I have liked pagans I have met, I like their spirituality, and generally pagans are keener on equal marriage than Southern Baptists because pagans are more sane. Unfortunately, Newt continued:

but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.

Oh. So. Two perfectly nice ordinary groups of Americans, mostly friendly and pleasant enough, are named as Enemies of Civilisation. The Enemy Within. We don’t have the Commie threat any more (many of those damn commies were homosexuals) so Newt has to make do with homosexuals and pagans. Oops, don’t forget Muslims:

Remember, the Organization of Islamic Countries is dedicated to preventing anyone, anywhere in the world from commenting negatively about Islam, so they would literally eliminate our free speech and there were clearly conversations held that implied that the U.S. Justice Department would begin to enforce censorship against American citizens to protect radical Islam

I seem to remember a good news story from the Republican primaries. Wasn’t there an out gay Republican candidate? Someone more centrist and moderate? Oh yes, Fred Karger. How’s he doing, then? He has not secured a single delegate. And what does he think of the people getting involved in politics?

It’s great that we can express our political ideologies by dressing up as colonial revolutionaries and yelling about economic policies we don’t understand. But were the Tea Party and Occupy movements populist statements reflecting democratic dialogue, or did they serve only to undermine perfectly capable “establishment” candidates?

Leave it to the professionals, in other words. After all, they have done brilliantly so far…

Picture credits: Mitt. Newt. Fred. Dave.

Good patriotic Americans might think that, considering I have never been West of Reykjavik, I should not involve myself in their private grief. But the Leader of the Free World affects us all, and my country has been to war twice, on his say-so, in the last ten years.

Ask you what provocation I have had?
The strong antipathy of Good to Bad.

The Googling to find this stuff took minutes. It is easy to find monstrous and vile things that these men say.

John Perrot’s hat

Part of the Quaker testimony to equality is a thrawn insistence on showing only the respect of an equal, even to the monarch. When a man addressed a superior as “you” and an equal or inferior as “thou”, we called all men “thou”; and where an inferior would take off his hat to his betters, we took off our hats to no man, no Lord, no judge. Our founders were put in prison for this lack of respect.

Men worshipped wearing their hats, a custom we in Britain have dropped only in the last century. A friend wanted to get a Quaker hat, but the problem was that there was no one design: the Quakers’ hats and bonnets were visibly different from those of outsiders, but their fashions changed over two hundred years.

Fashions change in Ministry, as well. I have only ever heard ministry which is addressed to the gathered congregation. People talk of God, of right conduct or of politics with a moral slant; but I am aware that there is a convention if anyone in ministry prays to God. The minister in that case kneels down, and everyone else stands. And, when the men wore hats, they would take them off.

John Perrot, who still does not have his own Wikipedia article, wished to keep his hat on during prayer. He argued that if taking off the hat was no true honour to another man, it was no true honour to God either. George Fox imposed his authority, and Perrot was driven out of the Society of Friends.

Where we have ritual- shaking hands to end a meeting, or the guidance on what is appropriate Ministry- it helps that it is the same across the country. We seek the leadings of God in making our decisions, but the orthodox Quaker custom had evolved in worship and been affirmed by decisions made in worship. Perrot sought to go his own way on this.

My own refusal to obey authority led to a minute of disunity from my area meeting, condemning me. That minute was reversed when it was considered by wise Quakers from outside the AM, but  that process was incredibly painful for me. As a lawyer, I want to distinguish the imposition of authority on me from that on Perrot. When I made a stand against my friend being scapegoated, I was myself scapegoated, wrongfully. I absolutely refused the ultimatum imposed on me. I was always willing to meet in Worship to discern a way forward, and promote reconciliation between my friend and her persecutors. Fortunately, I am happy in my current area meeting, and I have a role in which I serve it.

————————————————————————————————————–

Ours is a Society without a hierarchy. We make decisions together, seeking God’s loving purposes: what is the right thing for us to do, here, now? Our Quaker roles, of Elder and Overseer (from Greek “Episcopos”) circulate among the members of the meeting. 

Retreating together is a powerful thing, able to build community, and that is why it is an excellent thing for Northamptonshire AM or Central Manchester LM to do, and in this case such a toxic thing for South Wales AM elders and overseers to do. It was in one of their retreats that they considered a conflict between one of themselves and a vulnerable but committed Friend, and decided to exonerate themselves, and scapegoat her. Seeing that it was a conflict between themselves and one Friend, H, they should have sought outside help and reconciliation: but they did not see that. The outside helper already involved was asking them uncomfortable questions, so they rudely told her that her assistance was no longer required, and started a sustained campaign of bullying and vilification. That has led, two years later, to H’s exclusion from the Society of Friends.

At area meetings discussing this, where Friends are supposed to attend “with hearts and minds prepared”, elders and overseers have worked very hard to prevent the facts being known. Only their interpretation could be heard. They directly accused me of lying, behind my back, when I could not be present and had no chance to respond, and on the evidence of one witness, which was contradicted by her own writing. When I complained their accusation was false, they silenced me: I was impugning the word of the one of them who called me a liar. One reason they gave for silencing me was that she was not present to answer me, a rich hypocrisy. Thereby, they forced through the minute of disunity with me, which was only reversed on appeal six months later. Because I had moved, they sent a letter to my new area meeting. Perhaps fortunately, it condemned me utterly, and portrayed me in an entirely negative light: it was therefore belied by experience of me. I am accepted and happy in my Quaker meeting, no thanks to the liars in South Wales.

————————————————————————————————————–

The appeal panel overturned the minute of disunity, which is now void. They specifically criticised South Wales elders and overseers for claiming that I alone was responsible for the conflict. Having more delicacy than I about the use of the word “lie”, they call this an “oversimplification”. In the meeting of the AM which received the appeal panel’s report, elders and overseers prevented this criticism from being read out. And so they continued their campaign of mendacity to force through the humiliation of my Friend H.

My current area meeting show their regard for me by appointing me assistant clerk. I am unsure of the current situation in South Wales and Cardiff Meeting. Sometimes, scapegoating and expulsion of an innocent victim, and the creation of an out-group, can make a community bond more closely. Quakers should have a more excellent way of building community.

Orthorexia

A woman in her late teens shuttled between two hospitals, being treated for anorexia. When she was brought physically in shape, she would be sent back to the mental hospital on the other side of the city. As there was no coordination of treatment between the two, her condition was managed rather than treated, until she died of it. Perhaps with my life and eating being controlled by doctors, I would lose the will to live.

Anorexia is a coping strategy. Often, people with anorexia will have other strategies, such as cutting- “cutting” is the word used by many who have that coping strategy, “self-harm” is the word imposed by outsiders classifying them. If their cutting is treated too intrusively, they may reduce it, and turn to eating control instead. Anything for a quiet life. It is necessary to deal with the underlying issues, rather than the coping strategies which are symptoms of them.

If I want to avoid certain foods because of ethical concerns, or for my own ideas about my own health, that is my concern. “Orthorexia” is a word coined by doctors to describe such behaviour, implying that it is an eating disorder characterised by a harmfully rigid adherence to particular dietary rules. It may be linked to obsessive compulsive disorder, they say.

Honestly, doctors butting in all the time. These are ordinary coping strategies. Everyone is a little nuts, and it is as if these busybody doctors think alcohol was created for making sterilising wipes.

Synaesthesia is a condition where the senses affect each other. So particular sounds may cause someone to see colours, or words may appear coloured. Olivier Messiaen had the condition, and used it in his music, such as Colours of the Celestial City. While it is not “normal” in the sense that only a small proportion of the population have it, and arguably it is slightly maladaptive, as it is an additional way of perceiving the World as other than it is, people with the condition generally are quite happy with it, so doctors can back off. No cure needed here, thank you.

Transsexuality is a natural variation of the child in the womb, through which girls are born with testicles, and boys with ovaries. While it might please certain people with overly tidy minds to convince those boys that they really were girls, and their ovaries were the most important thing for deciding that, from the inside it feels like who I really am, my identity, is the most important thing. I am female. I would be less “cured” if I was made happy presenting male, because then I would not be me.

So again, I think that the American Psychiatric Association, about to publish its fifth edition Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, can butt out. I am not mentally ill. Perhaps DSM 5 could include a diagnosis of psychotic pseudo-transsexuality, where there was a psychosis producing a delusion of transsexuality- but I am female, and my disorder was entirely physical. It was alleviated by genital correction surgery. I am not sure I particularly want screened against mental illness: I think the strain of transsexuality on a child might cause mental illness, rather than the other way round. I resent gender dysphoria being included in a manual of mental disorders, where it has no place.

Everything is beautiful

Not working, and not looking for work, is not sensible. I am clear on that. Why am I like that? Well, because I can be, just for the moment. There are advantages. My nails are stronger than they have ever been, this time of year, because I am actually going outside in daylight.

Subconscious motivations are possible. A woman I knew, who when pretending to be male had shown physical courage, got a job in a shop. People regularly went into that shop for a game of “Mock the Tranny”. She gave up the job, and drank herself silly every evening, in a gay bar ten miles from her home. So am I creating the crisis which will force me to act? Much more slowly than she did. I may be.

I could really be just whistling in the dark when I say to myself, things are percolating within me. And yet. Everything is alright.

Here is an example. I park behind the office where I volunteer, and walk a hundred yards to the back door. This is what I see beside the office:

It seems I have a choice here. I can see it as ugly, and see it; or ignore it and concentrate on something beautiful, like the tree; or I may see it as beautiful.

I faced that question twenty years ago, when I walked regularly along the Union Canal. I was distressed by the litter by it; then thought I can concentrate on that, or consider the beauty of the countryside, that glorious aqueduct, the birds, the trees. So I blocked out the litter.

Then I saw photographs, starting with an exhibition at the Lowry centre, where the photographer had seen something beautiful in what might be thought ugly: an angle, a texture, an unusual perspective, a reflection, a juxtaposition, light, and so had created a beautiful image of an “ugly” thing. That is not what I am doing in the above photograph: I sought to represent the building, though I made the conscious choice to include a bit of sky above it in the picture.

These pictures began to liberate me from classification: these things are ugly, those beautiful. What I seek to do now is see beauty in everything. That building is beautiful. See the universe in a patch of rust, and heaven in concrete.

This is part of a readjustment I wish to make in myself. I have a grotesquely overdeveloped sense of threat. I find threat everywhere. Then I block my feelings out of consciousness. I seek to see things clearly as they really are, rather than blocking them out, and I seek to reduce my sense of threat. Rather than inhabiting the world, I camp out in it, fearing everything, when my fear restricts me and is the bigger problem.

Because there could be real threats, with the global financial crisis and my current jobless state. I need to be able to face any real threats.

So the adjustment is to see what is around me, to be aware of what I feel about it; and to know that everything is alright. Then to be aware of the alrightness in my world. Part of that is seeing things as life-enhancing and beautiful.

My bathroom is not well heated, and I was cold, uncomfortable and rushing. Then, by- an act of will?- I felt, I am OK, I am sufficiently comfortable. I relaxed tense muscles. I ceased to hurry. I am not sure how far this goes, but- can I Decide to be comfortable enough in a situation? Then respond to it creatively, rather than panicking? What is going on, here, now?

Relax. Everything is OK. What is it I need to do, now? Up pops Johanna the Inner Critic and says yeah, yeah, sounds wonderful, you are not really doing that in any context which really matters- and I say, maybe not, but I am playing at it, and may do it seriously sometime. Playing at it can only be good. Try it in easy places first. Be able to fail at it without imagining that it is impossible.

————————————————————————————————————–

We talk like we know what’s going on. But we don’t. We don’t know anything. We’re young and we’re gonna screw-up a lot. We’re gonna keep changing our minds and even sometimes our hearts. And through all that, the only thing we can truly offer each other is… forgiveness.

 Take chances… a lot of them. Because honestly, no matter where you end up- and with who, it always ends up just the way it should be. Your mistakes make you who you are… you learn and grow with each choice you make. Everything is worth it. Say how you feel- always. Be you, and be okay with it. It doesn’t matter what any other person thinks.

 Never regret anything that has happened in your life, it cannot be changed, undone or forgotten so take it as a lesson learned and move on.

 If you spend your life regretting things in the past, before you know it… you will have wasted your life on regret.

 I never regret anything that has happened to me in my life, whether it is making a bad choice, deciding to do something I shouldn’t have, saying the wrong thing or not doing something I should have done… because all of these things have given me the knowledge I have today and helped make me who I am today… and that is one thing I will never regret.

 The best thing that you can do in life is follow your heart. Take risks. Don’t just take the safe and easy choices because you’re afraid of what might happen. Don’t have any regrets and know that everything happens for a reason.

 There comes a point when you’re more important than your past.

I got that from this list of quotes. Desiderata has a lot to answer for, I think. Then it fills me with resentment. It is all right for you! It is so Difficult! Then I forgive myself, a little.

I have now been blogging, and posting daily, for six months.

Snow

I have mocked the snow photographs on facebook. As if people never see it. “Clare added fifty photographs to the album ‘An afternoon walk’. Oh for the days of daguerrotypes, when every shot had to count!” But I headed off into the park, to see what I could capture. I opened the shutter a hundred times. The light was so bright that my automatic shutter speed was quick- if I had the DTs I could still have produced something.

I was snapping away at anything, and then I saw that movement, and snapped at it. Accidentally I have produced an image which delights me. Those water droplets, from when the mallard takes off! I have cropped it, of course.

I like the shape of this tree:

and this bridge. That colour is so lovely, almost anything would be pretty, though for interest it could do with a swan landing in the water. Never mind. The point of this exercise was just to snap snap snap away, in the hope that I caught something I liked. What of this, just minimal?

and the fowl make and mar reflections I like:

 All that colour on that thick branch:

What do you think?

Hockney in London

Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

My girlfriend lived in Muswell Hill, and was a member of a semi-professional orchestra. They went out to Swaffham, in Cambridgeshire, for a concert, and I tagged along. I thought it heavenly- clean air, open space, quiet, everything I had been missing for the previous two months. Some of the fiddlers thought it horrible. How could anyone bear to live in such a dead quiet place?

Now, at the Royal Academy, right in the heart of Dill-pickle, Londoners can have precisely what Johnson’s London missed: the view of the countryside. The exhibition begins with three beautiful trees, painted in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

Here are the Woldgate Woods, from November 2006. The picture is of course copyright to the artist: I hope I might use it here as part of a legitimate criticism of the exhibition- which I wholeheartedly recommend. That is the argument Wikipedia uses. The room at the RA where it now hangs has many such paintings, containing the same trees painted from the same spot. That tree on the left shows many different colours, and the more I look the more subtle differences I see in each tree. The shadow is different, the light is different. The effect is that I get to know the place, and learn to see better. I could see not the same tree, but the tree as it is in this precise moment. As the artist says, “it doesn’t have to be Woldgate. Your own garden will change as much”. The title of the exhibition, “A bigger picture”, relates to the size of the works, up to seven metres in width- but also to the new perspective the art gives. It is so popular that it is open to midnight, and at 9pm on Friday it was crowded.

I love the rich reds of the buildings on one painting, the heightened sense of the artist, is it that the picture gives the viewer the impact of the scene which it has for the artist? I love the thick confident lines and the lumps of dried paint, and the fine painstaking detail, and the trails of paint running down occasionally- the accidental or contained movement of the drips adding to the picture. I had to be chased behind the lines on the floor. I love the curve of that road, a vertiginous descent pulling me inwards, looking out to the plains below- very flet, Yorkshire, in parts of the East Riding. Close up, the paint glisters in the light of the gallery.

I like the jokes in the earlier work. In Nichols Canyon, there is a road with “Nichols Cyn Road” written on it, like in a map. What kind of representation is this? I love the way so many roads lead into Light. I was struck by Salts Mill, a model, humane place of employment in 1853, and the narrow backtobacks and cobbled streets of Bradford beside it. Not a pleasant place to live.

Near the end, we have a video wall, like the paintings arrayed in panels, moving slowly past leaves in the wood. I am fascinated by a single leaf, in the moment instantly, and people gaze, hypnotised.

Sardined on the Tube, going there, I actually got chatting to a man, over from Indiana where he works for Rolls Royce. That shows what an outsider I am.

Thanks to Hermes 7 for the invitation. The art and the company were alike wonderful.