steffan

I'm a survivor of childhood abuse. The abuse most often took the form of neglect, but was reinforced by somewhat extreme physical punishment. When you are being told that you are the problem, that you deserve the treatment you are getting, that somehow its your fault for the pain you are going through, you begin to think that maybe if you were different... that it wouldn't be happening to you.

So as a kid I often wished I was a girl, because I saw girls receiving love and acceptance that I wasn't getting. I know now that girls are abused as well, but I was a kid and didn't have that clarity. I also sometimes felt (and even now often feel) that I wasn't human at all, since being human meant having to deal with emotions and pain and a lot of stuff that I couldn't (and in some ways still can't) handle. I wished I was Vulcan, like Mr Spock, because he was immune from any feelings and didn’t have to deal with them. People would say "I know this makes you mad" and Mr Spock would say "I am incapable of being mad."

Even though I had these fantasies, I knew I was male and anyone talking to me for a half an hour would figure out that my issues were about love and acceptance and not my gender because I would have expressed it that way: “I wish I was a girl because I perceive people giving them hugs and telling them they care about them and they get attention for who they are, not what they do ‘wrong.’” It was never “I wish I was a girl because I KNOW that I am a girl inside.” Similarly, I would say “I wish I was an alien because they don’t have to have emotions and feelings and because of that they can’t be hurt by what other people do to them.” It was never “I wish I was an alien because I KNOW I am an alien inside.”

I don’t really talk about this stuff (which is odd because I talk about EVERYTHING, as a defense mechanism,) and I know that a lot of detractors of the idea of trans-ness would point at those things and use them as arguments against the transition of kids, (that it comes from abuse or neglect) but I don't think that way. I’m saying that I recognize the difference and I recognized it when I was a kid and could have told you as much.

Kids that are saying that they KNOW they are wearing the wrong gender, are saying something different than I said as an abused little kid. I was saying, “help me find a way to get love and acceptance, help me to experience and process these feelings of rejection and pain that I shouldn’t have to handle at this age, and BTW please stop hurting me.” These kids are saying “I may die if I have to live in this costume that is not in alignment with who I know I am, at my core.”

While my issues aren't the same as dysphoria or dysmorphia, they are close enough that I can sympathize. I can imagine that they feel different from normal people. That there is something wrong needs correction on a very basic level, and that they have no power to correct it, and that they have to hide how they really feel from everyone.

Hello. Sorry I haven't been here in about a year.

I came here to write about the plan of the current administration to erase everything except binary gender assignment.

(Just LOOK at this sh!t)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/us/politics/transgender-trump-administration-sex-definition.html

"The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, ... Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing."

a) Setting aside issues of identity, a "biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable” just DOESN'T EXIST. Doofuses.
b) Birth certificates are written out by people, and subject to all people's stupid prejudices and even just plain outright dumb error.
c) DNA testing will offer no clarity, the "Clear, grounded in science" binary categorization doesn't exist in DNA either.
d) The plan described here leads to shame, secrecy, self hate, self harm, etc. if you don't fit into one of the boxes described here, and then it spins the myth that there is no way to be a person that DOESN'T fit into one of those boxes.


Listen jackasses, just get the eff out of this issue entirely. The government doesn't need to be here. You are honestly doing way more harm than good. If the point is to discriminate against transgendered people, then denying that transgendered people exist seems like a pretty dumb way to go about it. Just have the courage to be bigots out in the open.

My uncle went insane, strictly speaking. When he got better, he told me that the experience wasn't one of feeling as if his mind was making up nonsense... It was one of feeling as if the world around him was the one going mad. His mind was still flexible enough to make sense of everything, and it seemed to him as if the people around him all began to very gradually act in stranger and stranger ways, until it demanded a response from him, at which point he learned that things weren't as he perceived them.

Lately I feel this way too. I look specifically at my country and think, it's all topsy-turvy and I wonder, "If the me of a decade or more ago were put all at once into this mess, he'd run. This is some serious sh!t. He'd be on his way to dual citizenship in someplace scandinavian." But the real me, I've had this change happen gradually, all the while thinking... well, THIS SUCKS, but I can take it, at least this slice of horror. One more, and THAT will be too much.

I wonder how much really IS too much?

In hindsight, all the songs in "The Sound of Music" seem particularly military in tone. I can just picture squads of marching men singing "How do you solve a problem like Maria" in sort of a camp North Korean military parade complete with goose-stepping.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
Left, Left, Left-Right-Left.
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
Left, Left, Left-Right-Left.

Not sure if they did that on purpose (given the Nazi overtones in The Sound of Music,) or if Rodgers and Hammerstein were just particularly attracted to marches.

It seems to me...

that abusers all want to take credit for the success of their victims... as if the way they punished another human being is something to be proud of, just because that person sucked it up and worked hard to *spite* them... to get past the abuse.

Then to have those bastards stand up and say "just look, she's a big success now, I guess I didn't do TOO bad by her.."

The puppy made a huge mess of his fur on his walk, keeping in mind your delicate sensibilities dear reader, there will be no details, but you can get close if you imagine a septic tank backup and you've about got it in terms of potential destruction and general disgust.

So needless to say, a bath was in order, which went down OK up until the time to get dried. He has a long coat so we have to use a hair dryer, which for some reason super-stimulates him and he starts to run around like crazy until he completely wears himself out, which takes anywhere from a half an hour to three days.

Add to that, the fact that the reason I was walking him early was due to having to log in to work early for a work meeting where we will discuss how an office I manage is trying to toss me under the bus.

Since I'm an imposter in an extremely important job that I am far underqualified to perform and I have a workplace that is notoriously intolerant of failure, naturally I take these things quite seriously and on the walk that's perhaps why I wasn't watching the pup as closely as one should.

Anyhow, I need to log in and attend this meeting at half past, and the dog is tearing around the house like he's an Italian gentlemen who has had a quad espresso and would very much like to explain to you how the Italian parliament works, except for translated into dog.

Whenever I am faced with these things, I try to remember that the color blue is simply a convenient construct of my senses that my poor addled brain has come up with in order to explain something that is otherwise unexpressable, and once I am dead it will be as if the color blue as I know it never existed.

I've been collecting discarded playing cards for about 6 years now. I'm trying to assemble a complete deck. I have 13 cards remaining, but the actuarial reality of probability makes the completion of the deck less and less likely with each card that I locate.

Today I found the two of clubs. The recent wet weather had soaked the card and it had divided, back and front. I found the back first, a card from a bicycle deck, back facing up. When I retrieved it, I thought I'd found a blank card, or one washed clean by the rain. Later I found the other half a block away, face up, and I knew when I saw it, that the two of clubs would have no back.

The interesting bit to me, is how each card now has been imbued with a certain circumstance. The condition, the location, the time of day. I make sure to write all of these things down in a notebook that I keep with the cards, but most times if I see that card again, say in a card game with friends, I remember what randomness has tried to tell me about this particular card.

I could read this tarot and tell you, if you drew the two of clubs, that the scenario seems unreadable, but with time, it will become clear.

If you have an inclination, the curated twitter feed for The Netherlands (https://twitter.com/Netherlanders) this week (7/16/17 or so to the present,) is crushing it. (Normally the Netherlander in question tweets under https://twitter.com/MENEERDEGREEF (just in Dutch.)) He seems a bit brash and loud (yes, loud on twitter.) But I must admit that he is entertaining. He's been covering the untranslatable Dutch concept of "gezellig" all week. (While I just said that the concept was untranslatable, it's closest English equivalent seems to be a hybrid of "cool" and "chill" (Cool, as in "be cool" and chill as in "chill out.") But it also seems like more than that, with an element of hospitality thrown in there for good measure... Wait, wasn't there another paren to close? Yes. Yes there was.)

I love the idea of these curated feeds (popularized by Sweden, and signal boosted by Stephen Colbert as he tried to take it over without being a Swede.) The concept being that a selected "typical" person tweets their unvarnished feelings out at the world from your country's official twitter account. It's too bad the US is too tightly wound to ever go for such a thing.

I think Coloradans, as a subset of Americans, are gezellig enough to handle it, but Californians are definitely not.

I used to dread interviewing for jobs until I got a job that required me to interview and hire people. I had to do that A LOT, and I probably interviewed 2 or 3 hundred people over the course of the 4 years that I worked there...

I took away three points from all those interviews, the first was: "if you can communicate and can actually perform the job you are applying for, then you have an advantage over 80% of the other applicants. That bit alone is helpful for me, because I'm very insecure, but I'm also honest, so I'll only apply for jobs that I'm capable of *doing.* Knowing that when I enter the door, I'm going to be better than most people they will see, is a big boost going into the room.

The other bit was: "Have some idea of how the company makes what it makes or does what it does and be able to explain that basic concept back to the interviewer, and have a few broad ideas on how you can contribute to that." Believe it or not, very few applicants will actually be able to do that, and it will seem very impressive, and it won't take a ton of prep work to get there.

The last point isn't part of the other two, it's about flipping the script on the interview. Don't get too hung up on the idea that they have all the power to REJECT. You actually can do some rejecting as well. THink about it this way, "Some guy wants me to work very hard to make money for them, instead of doing things that i enjoy and aren't stressy. I'm going to make sure they are good people to work for..." There are employers that are great, employers that are mild hassles, and employers that are abusive. In the interview, it's helpful to ask questions and start classifying. I like to ask these questions in as innocent a manner as possible... like, "what is the policy on company cell phones?" Because this gives me a hook into whether they will want me to answer issues at 7:30 PM at dinner, and they won't have prepped for this the way they will have prepped for "what's the work-life balance like here?" "Where could I go to get a nice sandwich after the interview..." gives you a clue into whether they actually GO TO LUNCH at this place, or they sit chained to their desks, etc. "Why are you hiring at this time?" lets you judge whether they burn through employees in a few months, ("we're always looking for good project managers!") or whether they are expanding because they've had a new product launch. ("We've promoted Bob to handle this new client, and we are helping him build a great team to go into Sweden!")

Most of dreamwidth (at least the active stuff on http://www.dreamwidth.org/latest ) is fan fiction of some type.

I'm wondering if I could start writing fan fiction for a story that doesn't exist. (Yeah, I get it, that would just be *fiction* genius.) But I mean a story that is plugged in to an unspoken yet constantly referenced canon that exists for the characters and just assume my audience knows exactly what that canon is...

Sort of related to that, vice had an interesting article on Snape identifying as a trans woman... it's remarkably well thought out, and whether Rowling put it there or tapped into it subconsciously, there is definitely something to it:

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/bjx8xm/the-shockingly-convincing-argument-that-severus-snape-is-transgender

"Snape is a character who inhabits a fluid, ambiguous position for most of the narrative—always between two worlds, and often quite literally lurking in the shadows of a room, outside looking in, Ensnapingthe senses said. "Snape reads as someone in the closet, and tragically so."

To understand trans Snape scholarship, you have to immerse yourself into the text. Snape's profession is a useful entry point for this discourse: As Hogwarts' potions teacher, Professor Snape reveals her personal appreciation for the power of potion making in the first book, telling students that "there will be no foolish wand-waving" in her class. In 2011, author Racheline Maltese wrote a compelling, iconic essay about Snape as a female heroine, noting that Snape's seemingly insignificant comment about wands here is actually an early indication to the reader that "this character is, on some level, a rejection of masculinity, especially in light of the many moments of phallic humor wands provide us throughout the series."