A Moment In Memory

How do you reconcile murder wrought of bigotry knowing that a person, someone's loved one, has been killed simply because someone else felt that they did not deserve to live simply because of who they were? How do you reconcile the murder of over 179 people, just in the last year. How can you come to terms with the fact that many more never came to our attention? How do you come to terms with the loss of the many more who's lives were so filled with hatred and violence towards them that they chose to end their own life rather than bear the burden of bigotry? How can you comprehend the loss they have left in their wake?

How can one begin to wrap their mind around the hatred that is so intense and poignant that it could result in such violence and tragedy? How can one have faith in humanity knowing that these crimes were done deliberately?

How is this acceptable? How is this understandable?

How can we reconcile the fact that we live in a society where our very identities are stripped from us after death by the police, by the media, and sometimes by our own families? How can we reconcile the fact that this is seen as acceptable and proper? How can we come to terms with a culture where not only are our bodies fit to slaughter but our memories fit to burn?

Nothing we can do can erase the violence and bring those who have been lost to us back to life. Yet, we can fight to make sure they are remembered, as best we can, for the people they were. We owe them this.

Please, take a moment to read the names of those who have died and to pay tribute, as best you can, to their memory.

May their memory cast the seeds of love in their absence.

Hypochondriasis

I saw my general practitioner a couple weeks ago for help with my chronic pain and I was dismissed. In a couple days I'm seeing my psychiatrist and hopefully he'll be able to help me understand what is going on with my neurology and why everything is so esoteric. I want to know what is going on with regards to my body -- I want explanations.

To be honest, I'd be happy with some clinical and institutional recognition that there's something wrong in the first place and it's so frustrating not having this.

I feel that when I sit down on an examination table that I'm sitting down to take a test. I know that there is something wrong with my body: I know that I should not be experiencing serious pain in everyday activities and I know the pain I experience is real. Likewise, I know that my memory problems are as real as my motor problems and I know my motor problems are changing in ways that are inexplicable. I know this to be real yet I feel the need to prove myself when I enter a doctor's office. I feel they will not believe me and that in the line of questioning they are waiting for me to trip up and make a "mistake" -- to tell them something that they feel is clinically suspect or impossible.

I am very afraid of being labeled a hypochondriac. I am afraid because of how many things are truly haywire with my body. I am afraid because of how unsure I sometimes feel. I worry that my communication style and how I perceive my body will be misconstrued as dishonesty or delusion. I am afraid they will not believe me.

I know what I experience is real. I know my pain is not in my head. I know my body jerks, tenses, and tremors against my will. I know that I have memory difficulties and that I have cognitive difficulty with self-care and executive function. I know this is not fake.

Yet at the same time I feel I have so much difficulty communicating what is going on with regards to my body that doctors don't really know what to do with me. I feel that I can't say "I don't know" in response to a question. I feel that if I seem unsure or if I seem too eager to point out something that maybe possibly could be something that is important but likely isn't that I'll seem like a hypochondriac. I feel that doctors expect one thing from me and it's not something I can truly deliver and I feel that because of this I am treated with suspicion.

If I appear fickle -- if I divulge a slew of possible symptoms or things that might be wrong with me it is because I am desperate. I know I am experiencing pathology and that my pain and my mind are not normal. If I seem attention-seeking and spurious it is because I am trying to give my doctors the tools they need to explain what is happening to me.

I am trying to provide the tools they need to provide the tools and the language I need to be able to make sense of my experience. This is important to me.

I am afraid, though, and I wish there were some way I could communicate in a way they understand.

House, Trans 101, and Exposition

I came home tonight and my mother, who is a huge House fan, asked me to tune the television so she could watch her show. It was a marathon so there were a lot of reruns and they were airing the episode where House is treating an intersex boy and there's the whole debacle where the parents are hiding it from him but then it comes out somehow and we have a big expose and generally have a Very Special Lesson to take home from the experience.

I've never actually seen the episode, to tell you the truth. I have no desire to watch this episode. The fact of the matter is I only know about this episode because I read about it through commentary by other people who did watch the episode. The truth is that I feel deeply uncomfortable when shows like House feature people who are like myself in terms of minority status.

Actually, I should be more accurate: I feel deeply uncomfortable when shows like House feature the minority status of people like myself. Fundamentally, when a character comes on one of these shows who is a minority the character itself is never truly the focus nor the point. The character is simply a vessel to showcase whatever makes them "exotic."

This is a form of tokenization and it is inherently dehumanizing not only for the character but for all the people who share the character's master status.

I don't much like that. I don't like something that is part of who I am exposed and put on display for the entertainment and benefit of people who are not like myself. It's just wrong. Even when the shows generally get things right and treat the issue with appropriate deference it feels violating. Fundamentally, placing difference on a pedestal for the benefit of the normative is nothing more than a glorified, modern day freak show.

... and it makes me feel like a freak.

... and the surreptitious glances in my direction to see how I'm responding don't help.

This is not, of course, to suggest that popular media should refrain from portrayals of minority characters. Certainly there are portrayals of minorities where the character is developed and a person in and of themselves. The difference is that they are characters who are minorities rather than just vehicles for 'exotic' characteristics.

~~

I actually feel that this is a large part of why I feel uncomfortable with regards to trans panels and other educational events where people of minority status get together to educate the majority. Too often I feel that these events are ultimately serving the privileged with regards to satiating their curiosity. I honestly do not feel that people are as ignorant as we assume they are and certainly if they had a mind to they could easily do the research to come away with at least the level of education they could ever hope to receive from a half-hour panel. Instead, I feel that the people on display are too often treated as objects of curiosity and, as such, not as individuals.

I've been thinking maybe how we could do better with regards to educational panels and I've been thinking that the best way to do it would be to focus the education not on the people's minority status and their life experience, which seems to be what invariably happens, but on the way that the people of the majority interact with minority persons. I feel that doing this takes away the voyeuristic factor which is so problematic while at the same time centering the discussion on the audience and what they need to do to address our problems.

~~

Anyway, this whole thing is still something that I'm working over in my head so, of course, thoughts if you have them!

To Remember Our Fallen

November 20th is Transgender Day of Remembrance. For those who don't know, Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day for mourning the death of those who have fallen by violence within our community because of who they are -- simply because they were like us. It is a moment for us to remember and to memorialize those who have died. It is a moment where we can come together to read their names as best we can. It is a moment for us to remember the real victims to the faceless violence that takes countless lives every year. It is a solemn and powerful moment.

It is for us.

If you need to understand how sacred this day is you need only think of the countless trans people who have lost their families. Who will mourn the death of the faceless transsexual killed in a hotel room? Her family has left her long ago. Who will mourn the death of the young woman who's parents wished was a son? Will her life story be edited and revised to erase who she was? Will hatred and bigotry slaughter her memory, too?

Many of my dearest friends: If they were to die would their epitaph be their own?

This day is not for you. It is for ours.

With that in mind, please read this announcement from the Diversity Center in Santa Cruz:

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Please join us for this poignant, meaningful and FUN event. We will feature trans-related artwork, trans-health information with Planned Parenthood's Dr. Jen Hastings, speakers, music, spoken word pieces by Lex - all in addition to a candle-light ceremony honoring the names and lives of those we've lost to the violence of transphobia.

Additional information with more specific, exciting event details will be posted here soon.

I am beyond words. To describe this sacred day as "fun" or "exciting" is repulsive to the extreme. I have no words to express how violent, how cruel, it is to so trivialize the deaths of our slain.

This is disgusting and it is not alone in the attempt by many to gentrify our Day of Remembrance. I am tired. Our slain deserve to be remembered with dignity and reverence. Their requiem should not be a sideshow in a pride event.

This is for them. This is for us. This is for their loved ones.

HOW DARE YOU try to take this away!

Reclaiming Love

I want to take a moment when others might be quiet to tell you something. I want to tell you about love. I want you to understand. I want you to be able to feel what it means to me to fall in love. I wish you could experience with me how deep and powerful loving another is for me. I wish I could share the happiness and joy love brings to my life. I wish I could share these things so you might understand.

I want you to understand that I fall in love.

I want you to be able to see my love for what it is. I want to challenge the stereotype that people like me are incapable of feelings like mine, that when we talk about love we merely mean horny. I want to share with you so you will understand.

They say it is different for us. More often, I feel they simply believe it so. They see our feelings as alien and because they can not understand nor identify with it they fail to recognize it for what it is: love.

I want to share my heart with you because I want you to understand so you will be able to comprehend as I do. I want you to be able to know my love like I know it.

When you look at me, when you think of me I want you to know me as a woman who falls in love.

~~

I felt I had to write this. It's a terrible thing that I should have to feel that I need to reclaim and defend something so basic and fundamental to my humanity as the ability to love another. Nonetheless, I do feel the need.

Sometimes when I think about the way we are thought of as tragedy I think of what they say about how we cannot love like they can love. So much their perception of our worth is tied with our ability to love. When I think of this and imagine how we are tragic because we do not love like they love I feel -- I remember falling in love and I remember sharing my heart and becoming one. If this is what they mean when they talk about tragedy -- if this is what they mean to destroy when they talk about wiping out autism it scares me. It scares me because what I see is the desire to destroy something beautiful: our love.

I want to love, I want all of my brothers and sisters to love. I want generations of my people to be able to experience and to feel as I do.

That is why I fight.

This entry is part of Autistics Speaking Day.