Sunday 3 June 2012

Absorbing it all

Experiencing the world can get very intense very quickly, unless you know how to filter, sort and ignore some of what you register.

Coming out is hard to do

Especially when it's to yourself, in private. I've been vocal in public about being attracted to women as well as men, but at some point I started owning it less and less... by the time I realised it was time to get back in touch with that aspect of my experience, I had some faint internalised homophobia to replace with genuine self-love. Admitting this was difficult, because I've always prided myself on my open-mindedness and my political activism, especially where GLBTI rights are concerned. But I am lucky - like remembering how to play the guitar again, I relied on sense memory and positive NLP to work through my fears, and now I feel ready to love anyone.

I love and support transgendered and intersex people

In the feminist (radical and otherwise) circles I am part of, many women identify as 'transcritical' and think themselves progressive by churning out transphobic arguments, which I can't stand. Fear and hate are apparent in each interaction, can hardly be concealed. In contrast, the transpeople I have known have invariably been lovely to me. Very often they have offered me nothing but kindness and consideration from the beginning of our interaction till the end. They experience extreme prejudice from a startling variety of sources, yet still maintain their dignity and a love for the people they share the earth with. If only more people put themselves in their shoes and walked around, the world would be a better place.

If you don't know any transpeople, please go to your nearest queer-friendly bar and start a respectful conversation when you can... I promise you that the only thing to fear is fear itself. Transpeople are just like all of us, trying to make sense of a world where the gender roles given to us are rigid, confining  and inadequate to express ourselves as we'd really like to. At the end of the day, it's about being comfortable with who you are; trying to find that elusive [comfortable, creative and celebratory] space within.

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