Trans Am Quotes

I'm done begging for a scrap of respect-I am done with those who enact suffering, and I am done with the sons of bitches who stand back and let it happen.

I am rather disturbed by the fact that so many people—who are neither medical professionals nor trans themselves—would want to hear all of the gory details regarding transsexual physical transformations, or would feel that they have any right to ask us about the state of our genitals.

I have no sense of myself anymore besides the fact that I am not what I once was. I'm too tired to see my body from the eyes of others, in the terrible way trans-ness demands--always existing both inside and outside myself, judging as an observer. Now, I am a pile of flesh on the floor, everything hurts, and I do not give a shit.

I finally said, "Let's put it this way: I'd rather lose you than stop my shots.""You mean that chemical is more important to you than I am?""No, I am more important to me than you are.

The first thing you're going to want to know about me is: Am I a boy, or am I a girl?

Who am I but someone others define? It's easier to be a stereotype. It hurts when you are yourself.

I found power in accepting the truth of who I am. It may not be a truth that others can accept, but I cannot live any other way. How would it be to live a lie every minute of your life?

Sorry about Bender," Lula said, letting the Trans Am idle at the curb. "Maybe we could tell Vinnie he died. We could say we were all set to bring Bender in, and he died. Bang. Dead as a doorknob." "Better yet, why don't we just go back and kill him," I said. I opened the door to leave, caught my toe in the floor mat, and fell out of the car, face first. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the stars. "I'm fine," I said to Lula. "Maybe I'll sleep here tonight.

The black, the white, the brown, the red, the yellow, the hetero, the homo, the trans, the poor, the rich, the literate, the illiterate, the weak, the strong – all are my sisters and brothers. My life is their life. And till the last breath in my body, I shall be serving you all with all the power in my veins. And beyond death, my ideas shall be serving you for eternity.

What is love? Great minds have been grappling with this question through the ages, and in the modern era, they have come up with many different answers. According to the Western philosopher Pat Benatar, love is a battlefield. Her paisan Frank Sinatra would add the corollary that love is a tender trap. The stoner kids who spent the summer of 1978 looking cool on the hoods of their Trans Ams in the Pierce Elementary School parking lot used to scare us little kids by blasting the Sweet hit “Love Is Like Oxygen”—you get too much, you get too high, not enough and you’re gonna die. Love hurts. Love stinks. Love bites, love bleeds, love is the drug. The troubadours of our times all agree: They want to know what love is, and they want you to show them. But the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape.

...I really did "choose" to be Jim every single day, but that once I put my sword down I haven't chosen Jenny at all; I simply wake up and here I am.

Her body is telling her, hey fucker, I am a trans body, you need to do the things that you do to take care of a trans body.

So now my prayer is this: You, my own deep soul, trust me. I will not betray you. My blood is alive with many voices telling me I am made of longing. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Dann bete du, wie es dich dieser Iehrt,” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead Books, 1996)

Asking for love as a trans person, with the blunt hammer weight that word carries, feels like walking on fragile, cracking ice. Asking for love as the angry mess I am feels like inviting dark water to swallow me whole. Of course I didn’t want to test his love for me. I knew it would have a breaking point. I just didn’t want to learn where that was.

I paused for a light at Hamilton and TWlfth and noticed the Nissan was running rough at idle. Two blocks later it backfired and stalled. I coaxed it into the center of the city. Ffft, ffft, ffft, KAPOW! Ffft, ffft, ffft, KAPOW! A Trans Am pulled up next to me at a light. The Trans Am was filled with high school kids. One of them stuck his head out of the passenger-side window. "Hey lady," he said. "Sounds like you got a fartmobile." I flipped him an Italian goodwill gesture and pulled the ball cap low on my forehead. (Three to get Deadly)

The misconception of equating ease of life with “passing” must be dismantled in our culture. The work begins by each of us recognizing that cis people are not more valuable or legitimate and that trans people who blend as cis are not more valuable or legitimate. We must recognize, discuss, and dismantle this hierarchy that polices bodies and values certain ones over others. We must recognize that we all have different experiences of oppression and privilege, and I recognize that my ability to blend as cis is one conditional privilege that does not negate the fact that I experience the world as a trans woman (with my own fears, insecurities, and body-image issues) no matter how attractive people may think I am.

It really hasn't hit me that I am about to die. I see the grief around me, but inside I feel serene and a certain kind of peace. My whole life I've wanted to be a gay man and it's kind of an honor to die from the gay men's disease.

I'm a woman. And I'm a man. That's how it is for me. I am in a body that I prefer. But the past, my past, is not subject to surgery. I didn't do it to distance myself from myself. I did it to get nearer to myself.

My opened shirt blew in the wind—The sun tanning my stomach—Feeling lean and alive and beautiful—Saying I am a man—Saying I love men.

The moms I knew when I was little didn't have to prove that it was okay to want a child. Sure, a lot of women I know wonder if they do want a child, but not why. It's assumed why. The question cis women get asked is: Why don't you want kids? And then they have to justify that. If I had been born cis, I would never even have had to answer these questions. I wouldn't have had to prove that I deserve my models of womanhood. But I'm not cis. I'm trans. And so until the day that I am a mother, I'm constantly going to have to prove that I deserve to be one. That it's not unnatural or twisted that I want a child's love. Why do I want to be a mother? After all those beautiful women I grew up with, the ones who chaperoned my classes on field trips, or made me lunch when I was at their house, or sewed costumes for all the little girls that I ice skated with — and you too, Katrina, for that matter — have to explain their feelings about motherhood, then, I'll explain mine. And do you know what I'll say? Ditto.

Our identities matter. They help make us who we are and shape our outlook. Existing in them is a radical act, one that requires, in many instances, courage, hard work, and determination. I am a better person because of the experiences and insights that I've had because I'm transgender. I'm a more compassionate person than I was before I accepted that part of my identity.

So you got sick of being trans?" "I got sick of living as trans. I got to a point where I thought I didn't need to put up with the bullshit of gender in order to satisfy my sense of myself. I am trans, but I don't need to do trans.

I know what I am. I know that I've chosen to identify as a transgender woman, and that I am - by and large - happy with where I am in this world. I'm far from perfect, and I could give you a list as long as my arms of the things I'd love to change. Nevertheless, I am still here, and I am still me, and no one can change that without my permission. -Gwendolyn Ann Smith, "We're All Someone's Freak

Sometimes it’s hard to feel real. It’s hard to even feel trans because people don’t believe us, but I know who I am.

Vic had gotten rid of the Hoff years ago. The Hoff was a loser, and Trans Ams were oil-leaking shitboxes. She didn’t miss him.

I believe my transness is a reactionary fact, not an innate one. I am trans because the world made me so, not because I was born different. I am trans because the systems the world operates through force me to be so, not because of genetics. I am trans because of you, not because of me. I did not aways know, because I once imagined a world where I would not have to know.

I am against the rush to medicalize our children and young people to present as the opposite sex when they are confused or when other conditions such as autism are misattributed as trans.

Being a living trans person means vigilance. For a non-passing trans person, there is no safe space. It is not who we are kissing, but our very heights, our voices, and the size of our hands that catalyze hatred and violence. Forget activism; simply negotiating one’s world every day, constantly judging, adjusting, scanning one’s surroundings, and changing clothes to go from one role to another can be overwhelming. Add to that cases of family disownment, poverty, homelessness, HIV. When a recent study of transgender youth reports that half their sample had entertained thoughts of suicide, and a quarter of them had made at least one attempt, I am not surprised.

I am but a yogurt-covered pretzel in the void. Sweet on the outside, salty on the inside, and always deceiving people into thinking I’m not that bad when I’m actually packed with calories and trans fats.

I'm a writer and I'm feeling like death, as you would too if you'd just flown into Grand Rapids, Michigan at some ungodly hour of the morning only to discover that you can't get into your hotel room for another three hours. In fact it's enough just to have flown into Grand Rapids, Michigan. If you are a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, then please assume that I am just kidding. Anyone else will surely realise that I am not. Having nowhere else to go, I am standing up, leaning against a mantelpiece. Well, a kind of mantelpiece. I don't know what it is, in fact. It's made of brass and some kind of plastic and was probably drawn in by the architect after a nasty night on the town. That reminds me of another favourite piece of information: there is a large kink in the trans-Siberian railway because when the Czar (I don't know which Czar it was because I am not in my study at home I'm leaning against something shamefully ugly in Michigan and there are no books) decreed that the trans-Siberian railway should be built, he drew a line on a map with a ruler. The ruler had a nick in it.

I’m sorry,” he suddenly blurts, noticing my appalled expression. “I’m just written this way.” ​“What?” I question, confused. ​“It’s a trope in romance,” the dinosaur continues to explain. “The more of an asshole I am in this part of the book, the better the payoff is when you change me later on.

Long before we had writing or farms or post-digital strike helicopters, we had each other. We lived together and changed each other, and so we needed to say “this is who I am, this is what I do.” So, in the same way that we attached sounds to meanings to make language, we began to attach clusters of behavior to signal social roles. Those clusters were rich, and quick-changing, and so just like language, we needed networks devoted to processing them. We needed a place in the brain to construct and to analyze gender.

So I get a little tired of having to swallow my lived experience to be force-fed someone else's what-ifs. I get tired of my safety coming second. I get tired of the realities of trans and gender non-conforming people's lives being overshadowed and ignored in favour of a boogey-man that might be lurking in the ladies' room. I get really tired of being mistaken for a monster. I get tired of swallowing all these bathroom stories and smiling politely. But the last thing I can do is allow myself to get angry. Because if I get angry, then I am seen as even more of a threat. Then it's all my fault, isn't it? Because then there is a man in the ladies' room, and for some reason, he's angry.

My name is Daphne.' Daphne? In that moment, it's as if I've peeled the skin away from the chest of a patient, revealing a beating heart. A boy could not say that name as if terrified the syllables will break in the mouth. A boy-born-boy could not recognize what I am. Of course her name is Daphne. I stand up straight, taking a step from the door; and then another, and another. She's like me.

Even though I am extremely lucky, this narrative where trans people have to feel lucky for these crumbs-that we fought hard for and still fight for-is perverse and manipulative. Here is the thing-I almost did not make it, the permanent emptiness, a mystery I would never solve. Incessant, without language, a depth of despair...I should not have to grovel with gratitude. Am I grateful? Fuck, yeah! But everyone should have access to gender-affirming health care and lifesaving health care. It just should be.

I am critical of gender identity theory – but not of trans people, for whom I have friendly sympathy and respect.

Sometimes it seems like being trans is the only bad thing that has ever really happened to Maria. Like she’s got a turtle shell to keep anything bad from ever happening to her, and with that shell there she can’t move. Probably what Maria needs more than anything is for something pretty bad but not catastrophic to happen to her. Maybe this breakup can be that thing, but probably not. It sounds like Maria’s already spinning it into an opportunity for self-mythologizing instead of for learning or growth or whatever. Which Maria will go on to talk about when she meets her own next girlfriend. Here is what I’ve figured out about myself, here is how emotionally honest I can be, here is how vulnerable I am. With cussing.

A first thing to note, in case it’s unclear, is that I am not arguing against legal protections for trans people against violence, discrimination or coercive surgeries. I enthusiastically support these protections.

Karpo, as always, was dressed in black. His leather coat was black. Even his scarf and fur hat were black. Rostnikov thought that clothes reflected the people who wore them. Rostnikov himself dressed neatly, conservatively, in old comfortable suits and ties Sarah had bought for him at market stalls. As for Karpo's choice of black, Rostnikov was not given to simple judgment. He himself was rather fond of black, which was either the absence of color or the totality of color. There was a statement in black, he thought. Black said, You cannot penetrate my being by looking at my exterior. I am a dark cipher.

Tonight I am going to sleep alone on the bedclothes of purity. Aloneness is the first hygienic measure. Aloneness will enlarge the walls of the room, I will open the window and the large, frosty air will enter, healthy as tragedy. Human thoughts will enter and human concerns, misfortune of others, saintliness of others. They will converse softly and sternly. Do not come anymore. I am an animal very rarely. — Anna Świrszczyńska, from “I’ll Open the Window,” Talking to My Body, trans. by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan. Copper Canyon Press, (1996)

While some male "admirers" of trans women tend to fetishize us for our femininity or our imagined sexual submissiveness, I find trans women hot because we are anything but docile or demure. In order to survive as a trans woman, you must be, by definition, impervious, unflinching, and tenacious. In a culture in which femaleness and femininity are on the receiving end of a seemingly endless smear campaign, there is no act more brave - especially for someone assigned a male sex at birth - than embracing one's femme self. And unlike those male tranny-chasers who say that they like "T-girls" because we are supposedly "the best of both worlds", I am attracted to trans women because we are all woman! My femaleness is so intense that it has overpowered the trillions of lameass Y chromosomes that sheepishly hide inside the cells of my body. And my femininity is so relentless that it has survived over thirty years of male socialisation and twenty years of testosterone poisoning. Some kinky-identified thrill-seekers may envision trans women as androgyne fuck fantasies, but that's only because they are too self-absorbed to appreciate how completely fucking female we are.

I guess your gender feel natural to you. I'm jealous," he replies. Then he pauses. Thinks about it. "Except, actually, no. I don't think I am. I used to be. But the more I let myself just exist, the more fun it gets. So I try not to question it or label it. I'm trying to just see everything as.. negotiable.

The nature versus nurture debate has meaning for each of us here because we are constantly being asked in life: Why are you the way you are? When did you first know you were different? Do you think that while you were in the womb your tiny fist inadvertently clenched an essential gene too hard? Or was your mother domineering? And my answer is: Who cares! As long as my right to explore the full measure of my own potential is being trampled by discriminatory laws, as long as I am being scapegoated for the crimes committed by this economic system, my right to exist needs no explanation or justification of any kind.

You do not see deviantly gendered people walking around with Nalgene bottles, getting our sixty-four recommended ounces as we go through our days. I am sure that somewhere there is an argument to be made that the trans community as a whole is a little cranky because we could all use a nice big glass of water.

And nobody understands. My whole life is waiting for you. And nevertheless I search for the night of the poem. I’m only thinking of your body but am remaking the body of my poem as somebody trying to heal a wound. — Alejandra Pizarnik, from “[…] Of Silence,” Selected Poems, trans. Cecilia Rossi (Waterloo Press, 2010)

St. John,” I said, “I think you are al­most wicked to talk so. I am dis­posed to be as con­tent as a queen, and you try to stir me up to rest­less­ness! To what end?” “To the end of turn­ing to profit the tal­ents which God has committed to your keep­ing; and of which He will surely one day de­mand a strict ac­count. Jane, I shall watch you closely and anx­iously—I warn you of that. And try to re­strain the dis­pro­por­tion­ate fervour with which you throw your­self into com­mon­place home pleasures. Don’t cling so tena­ciously to ties of the flesh; save your con­stancy and ar­dour for an ad­e­quate cause; for­bear to waste them on trite tran­sient ob­jects. Do you hear, Jane?” “Yes; just as if you were speak­ing Greek. I feel I have ad­e­quate cause to be happy, and I will be happy. Good­bye!

Art is a captured emotion. When I say this I mean all artists, whether you are a photographer, a writer, or sculptor, you are trying to capture the way someone or something made you feel. As a story teller I am trying to captivate the audience and allow them to feel just a small portion of the emotion I am desperately trying to preserve.

You told me I couldn't live as a gay man, but now I am going to die as one.

You’re not a woman!” I say, “I don’t know what I am if I’m not a woman.

And so, I’m also afraid of women. I’m afraid of women who’ve either emboldened or defended the men who have harmed me, or have watched in silence. I’m afraid of women who adopt masculine traits and then feel compelled to dominate or silence me at dinner parties. I’m afraid of women who see me as a predator and whose comfort I consequently put before my own by using male locker rooms. I’m afraid of women who have internalized their experiences of misogyny so deeply that they make me their punching bag. I’m afraid of the women who, like men, reject my pronouns and refuse to see my femininity, or who comment on or criticize my appearance, down to my chipped nail polish, to reiterate that I am not one of them. I’m afraid of women who, when I share my experiences of being trans, try to console me by announcing “welcome to being a woman,” refusing to recognize the ways in which our experiences fundamentally differ. But I’m especially afraid of women because my history has taught me that I can’t fully rely upon other women for sisterhood, or allyship, or protection from men.

How much I love you! How much you are you! and intimidated by his own soul: There is no I now, but she is now in me. No she, but I am in her fragility. How I fear For my dream, lest it see a dream that is not she at The end of this song… — Mahmoud Darwish, from “The Strangers’ Walk,” Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?, trans. by Mohammad Shaheen ( Hesperus Press, 2014)

El negro, el blanco, el marrón, el rojo, el amarillo, el hetero, el homo, el trans, el pobre, el rico, el analfabeto, el analfabeto, el débil, el fuerte, todos son mis hermanos y hermanas. Mi vida es su vida Y hasta el último aliento en mi cuerpo, los estaré sirviendo a todos con todo el poder en mis venas. Y más allá de la muerte, mis ideas te servirán por la eternidad.

I am often asked why I took the risk of writing this book, and occasionally why I felt I had the right. The issue does not touch me closely. I’m not trans. I don’t have a trans-identified child. I’m not a detransitioner, or an athlete forced to compete against transwomen, or a lesbian seeking a partner on dating sites that are now filled with males. The answer to both questions is simple: I wrote this book because, unlike many other people, I could. Parents of children caught up in the gender-identity social contagion stay silent to protect their relationships. The detransitioners I know are traumatised. Many critics of this ideology can say nothing without risking their jobs. All these people need someone else to articulate what is happening.

This is part of the reason why I feel weird about introducing pronouns when people meet each other in groups; it creates this expectation that each of our genders should be mapped and appropriately invoked at any time, that I'm safer if someone can say exactly what I am, and that I would be harmed if my gender ever confused anyone (or confused me). I'd rather be misgendered than be "accepted" by an establishment that's making some kind of ominous bio/political truth claim about what my transness is. I don't want a trans utopia where there's 200 genders on the census box. I don't want a trans utopia where instagram asks me my pronouns and my sex assigned at birth and then targets marketing at me. I don't want cis people to make money using images of bodies like mine.

Too many of us as trans people have experienced something similar to the 'Miss or Mrs.' query - except it feels much more demeaning. It's the address I call 'Mamsir.' You know what I mean: 'Here's your change, ma'am, I mean sir, I mean ma'am, I mean sir.' It's debasing and embarrasses both people and anyone else who is listening. I despise the class subordination that resides in those once-mandatory forms of address, as well.

My memories are who I am. You take away my memories, you erase me. Existence is memory. Do you understand? You'd kill me. You'd murder Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka, daughter of Rita and Samuel, a child of love. Trans woman. Artist. Doctor. Healer. Native American. Jew. You erase my memories, and you erase my lineage of ancestors -- their pain, their triumphs, their passions, their dreams. No matter if the memories bring me pain. It's my pain! Let me have it.

That in a loving place, I am able to hear a friend disagree with me and know that they still care for me. That I can receive their advice and know that I don't have to follow it. That there is enough trust between us. I don't want to be validated. I want to be loved.

Most people are in the dark about what is being demanded by transactivists. They understand the call for ‘trans rights’ to mean compassionate concessions that enable a suffering minority to live full lives, in safety and dignity. I, alongside every critic of gender-identity ideology I have spoken to for this book, am right behind this. Most, including me, also favour bodily autonomy for adults. A liberal, secular society can accommodate many subjective belief systems, even mutually contradictory ones. What it must never do is impose one group’s beliefs on everyone else.

If one more person tells me that “all gender is performance,” I think I am going to strangle them. Perhaps most annoying about that sound-bite is the somewhat snooty “I-took-a-gender-studies-class-and-youdidn’t” sort of way in which it is most often recited, a magnificent irony given the way that phrase dumbs down gender. It is a crass oversimplification, as ridiculous as saying all gender is genitals, all gender is chromosomes, or all gender is socialization. In reality, gender is all of these things and more. In fact, if there’s one thing that all of us should be able to agree on, it’s that gender is a confusing and complicated mess. It’s like a junior high school mixer, where our bodies and our internal desires awkwardly dance with one another, and with all the external expectations that other people place on us. Sure, I can perform gender: I can curtsy, or throw like a girl, or bat my eyelashes. But performance doesn’t explain why certain behaviors and ways of being come to me more naturally than others. It offers no insight into the countless restless nights I spent as a pre-teen wrestling with the inexplicable feeling that I should be female. It doesn’t capture the very real physical and emotional changes that I experienced when I hormonally transitioned from testosterone to estrogen. Performance doesn’t even begin to address the fact that, during my transition, I acted the same, wore the same T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers that I always had, yet once other people started reading me as female, they began treating me very differently. When we talk about my gender as though it were a performance, we let the audience—with all their expectations, prejudices, and presumptions—completely off the hook.

If I am in a state of becoming, it has no endpoint. I imagine replacing the memories of everyone I've ever spoken to with the impression that they have only ever seen me as a being clothed in light. In the early part of the twentieth century, homophobes and eugenicists joined forces to study what they called inversion, an early term for homosexuality, gender nonconformity, and transness. They believed they could read and police queerness on the body. Maybe this is why I don't want to make myself legible. I want to erase the meanings that have been ascribed to my breath, to my sweat, to my hair and fat and skin. I trace the green veins in my neck that branch down into my breasts as feathers. I am painting myself as the bird that, to the world outside this room, does not exist. I draw myself clothed in wings and tell myself that even the angels are sexless.

I'm also afraid of women who've either emboldened or defended the men who have harmed me, or have watched in silence. I'm afraid of women who adopt masculine traits and then feel compelled to dominate or silence me at dinner parties. I'm afraid of women who see me as a predator and whose comfort I consequently put before my own by using male locker rooms. I'm afraid of women who have internalized their experiences of misogyny so deeply that they make me their punching bag. I'm afraid of the women who, like men, reject my pronouns and refuse to see my femininity, or who comment on or criticize my appearance, down to my chipped nail polish, to reiterate that I am not one of them. I'm afraid of women who, when I share my experience sof being trans, try to console me by announcing "welcome to being a women," refusing to recognize the ways in which our experiences fundamentally differ.

Christianity . . . does not [simply] stand in the history that we only know and which knowledge we take to ourselves so that we say “Christ died for us and has broken death in us and made it into life. He has paid the debt for us. We need only to comfort ourselves with this and firmly believe that it has happened.” Since we in ourselves find that sin in the flesh is living, desirous and active, that it might work, the new birth out of Christ must be something else that does not work along with the sinful flesh and that does not will sin. . . . Here a Christian is to consider why he calls himself a Christian and is truly to consider whether he is one. Because I may learn to know and understand that I am a sinner, and that Christ has killed my sins on the cross and shed His blood for me, this in no way makes a Christian out of me. The inheritance is only for the children. A maid in the house knows well what the wife would eagerly have. This does not therefore make her an inheritor of the wife’s goods. The devil also knows that there is a God [James 2:19]. That does not therefore make him an angel again. However, if the maid in the household marries the wife’s son, then she can truly come to the inheritance of the wife’s goods. . . . The scorner and the titular Christian is the whore’s son, who must be cast out for he is not to inherit Christ’s inheritance in the kingdom of God (Galatians 4:30). He is no use, and only Babel, a confusion of the one language into many languages. He is only a talker and arguer about the inheritance and wishes to talk and argue to it with his mouth-hypocrisy and appearance of holiness, but he is only a blood-thirsty murderer of Abel his brother who is the true heir. . . . If one says, “I have the will and wish eagerly to do good, but I have earthly flesh that holds me [back] so that I cannot [act]; nevertheless, I shall be blessed by grace because of the merit of Christ. Since I console myself indeed with His suffering and merit, He will take me out of grace, without any merit of mine, and forgive me my sins,” he acts like one who knows of good food for his health and does not eat it, but who eats instead the poison from which he becomes ill and dies. What does it help the soul if it knows the way to God and does not wish to take it, but goes instead on a way of error, and does not reach God? What does it help the soul if it consoles itself with the sonship of Christ, [with] His suffering and death, and is itself hypocritical, but cannot enter into the childlike birth so that it is born a true child out of Christ’s Spirit, out of His suffering, death and resurrection? Certainly and truly, this tickling and hypocrisy about Christ’s merits aside from the true inherited sonship is false and a lie, [regardless of] who teaches. This consolation belongs to the repentant sinner who is in strife with sin and God’s wrath when the temptations come that the devil sets on the soul. Then the soul is to wrap itself completely in the suffering and death of Christ in His merit. [The Way to Christ, trans. Peter Erb, 138-139, 156-158]

In the spread of gender-identity ideology, developments in academia played a crucial role. This is not the place for an extended critique of the thinking that evolved on American campuses out of the 1960s French philosophy and literary criticism into gender studies, queer theory, critical race theory and the like. I will merely focus on what some have dubbed 'applied postmodernism' and the form of activism, known as 'social justice', that seeks to remake humanity along ideological lines. And I will lay out the key elements that have enable transsexuality, once understood as a rare anomaly, to be converted into an all-encompassing theory of sex and gender, and body and mind. Within applied postmodernism, objectivity is essentially impossible. Logic and reason are not ideals to be striven for, but attempts to shore up privilege. Language is taken to shape reality, not describe it. Oppression is brought into existence by discourse. Equality is no longer achieved by replacing unjust laws and practices with new ones that give everyone the chance to thrive, but by individuals defining their own identities, and 'troubling' or 'queering' the definitions of oppressed groups. A dualistic ideology can easily be accommodated within such a framework. Being a man or woman – or indeed non-binary or gender-fluid - becomes a matter of finding your own gender identity and revealing it to the world by the medium of preferred pronouns. It is a feeble form of dualism to be sure: the grandeur of Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am' replaced by 'they/them' on a pronoun badge.

When I was younger, I remember taking pride in people’s well-meaning remarks: “You’re so lucky that no one would ever know!” or “You don’t even look like a guy!” or “Wow! You’re prettier than most ‘natural’ women!” They were all backhanded compliments, acknowledging my beauty while also invalidating my identity as a woman. To this day, I’m told in subtle and obvious ways that I am not “real,” meaning that I am not, nor will I ever be, a cis woman; therefore, I am fake. These thoughts surrounding identity, gender, bodies, and how we view, judge, and objectify all women brings me to the subject of “passing,” a term based on an assumption that trans people are passing as something that we are not. It’s rooted in the idea that we are not really who we say we are, that we are holding a secret, that we are living false lives. Examples of people “passing” in media, whether through race (Imitation of Life and Nella Larsen’s novel Passing), class (Catch Me if You Can and the reality show Joe Millionaire), or gender (Boys Don’t Cry and The Crying Game), are often portrayed as leading a life of tragic duplicity and as deceivers who will be punished harshly by society when their true identity is uncovered. This is no different for trans people who “pass” as their gender or, more accurately, are assumed to be cis or blend in as cis, as if that is the standard or norm. This pervasive thinking frames trans people as illegitimate and unnatural. If a trans woman who knows herself and operates in the world as a woman is seen, perceived, treated, and viewed as a woman, isn’t she just being herself? She isn’t passing ; she is merely being.

Palo Mayombe is perhaps best known for its display of human skulls in iron cauldrons and accompanied by necromantic practices that contribute to its eerie reputation of being a cult of antinomian and hateful sorcerers. This murky reputation is from time to time reinforced by uninformed journalists and moviemakers who present Palo Mayombe in similar ways as Vodou has been presented through the glamour and horror of Hollywood. It is the age old fear of the unknown and of powers that threaten the established order that are spawned from the umbra of Palo Mayombe. The cult is marked by ambivalence replicating an intense spectre of tension between all possible contrasts, both spiritual and social. This is evident both in the history of Kongo inspired sorcery and practices as well as the tension between present day practitioners and the spiritual conclaves of the cult. Palo Mayombe can be seen either as a religion in its own right or a Kongo inspired cult. This distinction perhaps depends on the nature of ones munanso (temple) and rama (lineage). Personally, I see Palo Mayombe as a religious cult of Creole Sorcery developed in Cuba. The Kongolese heritage derives from several different and distinct regions in West Africa that over time saw a metamorphosis of land, cultures and religions giving Palo Mayombe a unique expression in its variety, but without losing its distinct nucleus. In the history of Palo Mayombe we find elite families of Kongolese aristocracy that contributed to shaping African history and myth, conflicts between the Kongolese and explorers, with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade being the blood red thread in its development. The name Palo Mayombe is a reference to the forest and nature of the Mayombe district in the upper parts of the deltas of the Kongo River, what used to be the Kingdom of Loango. For the European merchants, whether sent by the Church to convert the people or by a king greedy for land and natural resources, everything south of present day Nigeria to the beginning of the Kalahari was simply Kongo. This un-nuanced perception was caused by the linguistic similarities and of course the prejudice towards these ‘savages’ and their ‘primitive’ cultures. To write a book about Palo Mayombe is a delicate endeavor as such a presentation must be sensitive both to the social as well as the emotional memory inherited by the religion. I also consider it important to be true to the fundamental metaphysical principles of the faith if a truthful presentation of the nature of Palo Mayombe is to be given. The few attempts at presenting Palo Mayombe outside ethnographic and anthropological dissertations have not been very successful. They have been rather fragmented attempts demonstrating a lack of sensitivity not only towards the cult itself, but also its roots. Consequently a poor understanding of Palo Mayombe has been offered, often borrowing ideas and concepts from Santeria and Lucumi to explain what is a quite different spirituality. I am of the opinion that Palo Mayombe should not be explained on the basis of the theological principles of Santeria. Santeria is Yoruba inspired and not Kongo inspired and thus one will often risk imposing concepts on Palo Mayombe that distort a truthful understanding of the cult. To get down to the marrow; Santeria is a Christianized form of a Yoruba inspired faith – something that should make the great differences between Santeria and Palo Mayombe plain. Instead, Santeria is read into Palo Mayombe and the cult ends up being presented at best in a distorted form. I will accordingly refrain from this form of syncretism and rather present Palo Mayombe as a Kongo inspired cult of Creole Sorcery that is quite capable

An Aside   To break with this routine I have written this manuscript in a way that challenges my reader to explore on the edge of language instead of drowning in devices intending to take for granted meanings and draw false assumptions burdened by planted biases. In your face are thrown one lie after another that defy what is actually seen and offer nothing of balance to either perspective or clarity on a daily basis... yet, it seems natural to you. Because there is no power to your sense of expectation. None. You are boxed into what is possible and what is not, even unsure of the shape of the earth. Led into debates over something as idiotic as that while you balk at having neighbors from elsewhere. So enormous is this Universe and yet you would limit its possibility to produce any of the wonders on some tiny grain of sand found on a beach in comparison. From written history anomalies have been spied and reported accomplishing what nothing today can. Trans Lunar Phenomena, recorded hundreds of years with thousands of reports demonstrate intelligent presence on the moon while nothing of this is factored into your narrow credulity. When one emerges who can answer resolution to so many anomaly, predicts events with accuracy, and offers what is needed to help you survive a planet crippled to the point of extinction, you cannot quit your routine of acquired preference for the mundane suited to a boxed-in comfort zone long enough to check him out. The few above this are too few. I feel quite privileged to have found four. Others are awakening yet still not shown to be at a point of no return to stifling group thought. If you are, then show me. Show me you are aware we near the point where nothing is left to lose. Where resolute action need not be possessed of fear. I will say this, unified consciousness would have no trouble with accepting this challenge I throw at your feet, but then conditions so favorable to enslavement here may be your problem and not that solely attributable to split consciousness. I am willing to engage with you to the very end of hope to find out. Wake up to the signs and ramifications of the trends set I have touched upon. Help awaits a world ready to receive it.

You want to kiss her, right?” “What?” I have lost track of our conversation. I was thinking about how if Kit called me her friend, then I would have multiplied my number of them by a factor of two. And then I considered the word flirting, how it sounds like fluttering, which is what butterflies do. Which of course looped me back to chaos theory and my realization that I’d like to have more information to provide Kit on the topic. “Do. You. Want. To. Kiss. Her?” Miney asks again. “Yes, of course I do. Who wouldn’t want to kiss Kit?” “I don’t want to kiss Kit,” Miney says, doing that thing where she imitates me and how I answer rhetorical questions. Though her intention is to mock rather than to educate, it’s actually been a rather informative technique to demonstrate my tendency toward taking people too literally. “Mom doesn’t want to kiss Kit. I don’t know about Dad, but I doubt it.” My father doesn’t look up. His face is buried in a book about the mating patterns of migratory birds. It’s too bad our scholarly interests have never overlapped. Breakfast would be so much more interesting if we could discuss our work. “So if you want to kiss Kit, that means you want her to see you like a real guy,” Miney says, and points at me with her cup of coffee. She’s drinking it black. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with Miney. Maybe she’s just tired. “I am a real guy.” How come even my own sister sees me as something not quite human? Something other. “I have a penis.” “And just when I think we’ve made progress you go and mention your penis.” “What? Fact: I have a penis. That makes me a guy. Though technically there are some trans people who have penises but self-identify as girls.” “Please stop saying that word.” “What word? Penis?” “Yes.” “Do you prefer member? Shlong? Wang? Johnson?” I ask. “Dongle, perhaps?” “I would prefer we not discuss your man parts at all.” “Wait, should I text Kit immediately and clarify that I do in fact have man parts?” I pick up my phone and start typing. “Dear Kit. Just to be clear. I have a penis.” “Oh my God. Do not text her. Seriously, stop.” Miney puts her coffee down hard. She’ll climb over the table and tackle me if she has to. “Ha! Totally got you!” I smile, as proud as I was the other day for my that’s what she said joke. “Who are you?” Miney asks, but she’s grinning too. I’ll admit it takes a second—something about the disconnect between her confused tone and her happy face—and I almost, almost say out loud: Duh, I’m Little D. Instead I let her rhetorical question hang, just like I’m supposed to

The desire for revenge rises within him, resplendent and gauche, like the phoenix on the hood of a Trans Am.

[P]assing expresses a form of agency as well as a promise of restoration, which is to say that passing—as a limited durational performance—signals a “return” to a natural-cum-biological mode of being. This narratological strategy shaped how passing would be deployed as an interpretive frame for all manners of trans-identificatory practices—both contemporaneously and reiteratively into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. No less performative but lacking a clear biologized semiotic referent, fungibility in this chapter expresses how ungendered blackness provided the grounds for (trans) performances for freedom. By describing their acts as performances for rather than of freedom, I am suggesting that the figures under review here illustrate how the inhabitation of the un-gender-specific and fungible also mapped the affective grounds for imagining other qualities of life and being for those marked by and for captivity. Brent/Jacobs referred to this vexed affective geography as “some- thing akin to freedom” that, perhaps paradoxically, required a “deliberate calculation” of one’s fungible status. Rather than regarding Jones, Waters, Jacobs, and the Crafts as recoverable trans figures in the archive, this chapter examines how the ungendering of blackness became a site of fugitive maneuvers wherein the dichotomized and collapsed designations of male-man-masculine and female-woman-feminine remained open—that is fungible—and the black’s figurative capacity to change form as a commoditized being engendered flow.

i am tran gender

Sometimes I feel like there are two of me. One who is a good hija. She helps Mom cook. She does what she’s told. She gets perfect grades. She is going to be a nurse just like Mom. I think of the picture of me in my white First Communion dress. The other me is bold and queer. He has hair dyed red. He wraps himself in a trans flag. He doesn’t care what his family thinks. I don’t know who I am sometimes between the two of me or what it would look like for those two mes to come together.

What I am trying to think, however, si how trans subjects might (and do) cultivate forms of self-regard and intracommunal recognition that bolster our ability to see ourselves—and love ourselves, and each other—even as crucial forms of intersubjective gendered recognition are withheld, even as we don't pass as cis, even as we're deprived of the forms of social mooring that gendered legibility and recognition provides: even as we inhabit lag time.

So straight away I want to be absolutely clear about what I’m not saying, before I go on to explain and justify these points in more detail in the next chapter. (I can anticipate a lot of these misunderstandings because they’re frequently fired at me by critics, as assumptions about what I must really be saying.) I’m not saying that to physically alter oneself to look like the opposite sex, or unlike one’s own sex, or both, isn’t ever a reasonable thing for adults to do in response to developing a misaligned gender identity. I think it can be, and have explained why in Chapter 4. More generally, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with looking or being radically sex nonconforming, either naturally or artificially. Quite the opposite. Personally speaking, I value and celebrate sex nonconformity: masculine women, feminine men and androgyny. Indeed, it’s partly in the service of this evaluation that I’ve made the arguments I have. I’m not underplaying the psychological relief it gives many trans people to think of themselves as members of the opposite sex. Nor, perhaps surprisingly, am I saying that trans women and trans men, respectively, shouldn’t ever call themselves ‘women’ and ‘men’ or be referred to that way by those around them. I’ll explain why in the next chapter. I’m not saying trans people are ‘deceivers’, nor that they are ‘delusional’ or ‘duped’ – far from it. I’ll explain why in the next chapter, so there can be no doubt.

See, following manu smiriti will go against many people not only land lords because most of land lords or OBC or FC, But SC/ST people will completely loss their identities and it is against Indian Law. And as world changes, profession changes, Identity changes, Krishna is for protection, wherever he lives and as long as manu smiriti is considered , it is important to consider the reason of krishna where protection of each cultural values are important and it leads to family culture. And if farming system is pointed then for my land I am saying this, others it is their wish and will, For my land I will allow traditional farming practices and remediation strategies on a condition that it I will be major share holder at least with 99.99% royalty and legal bondage as long as My generation lives. And I will never ever treat someone bad just because of his/her caste/religion, I will consider him/her as human being whatever or wherever they are are from and he/she/trans whatever gender they are - equal respect will be given.

The healthiest carbohydrates come from whole grains, legumes, vegetables and whole fruits. The least healthy carbohydrates come from white bread, white rice, past and other refined grains, sugary foods and drinks and potatoes. There is an easy way to tell healthy fats from unhealthy fats. Most of the healthy fats - the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats - come from plants and are liquid at room temperature. Rich green olive oil, golden sunflower oil, the oil that rises to the top of a jar of natural nut butter and the oils that come from fatty fish and all examples of healthy unsaturated fats. The unhealthy fats ( saturated fats ) and the very unhealthy fats ( trans fats ) tend to be solid at room temperature, such as the fat that marbles a steak or that is found in a stick of butter. Meat and full fat dairy products are the biggest sources of saturated fat in the western diet. So for good health, enjoy healthy fats, limit saturated fat and avoid trans fat. Mindfulness practice touches the stillness in ourselves. It allows us to calm down and reflect so that we can reconnect with our true self. When we are free from our automatic responses, we can see more clearly things as they are, from moment to moment, without judgment, preconceived notions or bias. We get to know ourselves better. We become more more in tune with our own feelings, actions and thoughts as well as with the feelings, actions and thoughts of others. You need to ask yourself what is it that you really want. Often our habit energy and fear prevent us from identifying what we want and from living healthily. The essential point is that we do not try to repress our afflictions, our negative energies, because the more we resist or fight them, the stronger they will grow in us. We need only to learn to recognize them, embrace them and bathe them in the energy of mindfulness. Once you can be in the present, you will recognize that your fears, anger and despair are all projections from the past. They are not the present reality. Don't just sit there and wait for your negative feelings to pass. Complaining will not change your life. Change your thinking and you can let go of limitations you imposed on yourself. Explore and be proactive. I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions and that I can live happily in the present moment simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy. Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening in order to relieve suffering and to promote reconciliation and peace in myself and among other people. I am determined not to try to cover up loneliness, anxiety or other suffering by losing myself in consumption.

Mountains rise from the mist like candles in an uneven buttercream. I want to smash them down with my thumbs. It’s ridiculous that Đà Lạt is so beautiful when I am this angry.

Whether your gender identity can be aided by physical changes or medical transition or not, it is worth considering what may bring you and your gender into alignment without placing too many expectations on what those kinds of changes mean. By not presupposing what your gender is and what it should be okay with, you allow yourself to determine the truth of it. You allow it to tell you when it feels good and when it hurts. You allow it to let you know when it feels supported and when it feels abandoned. Even if your gender does not tell you exactly how it formed into itself, it works hard to tell you what it needs to coexist peacefully with the rest of you. If you can listen carefully to it without assumptions, it will tell you what you need to know.

I am a tourist in the country where my parents were born. Even my clothes have been here before me.

I know this is a dream because I am not afraid of my father.

Although the designs of the trans and gender identity questions in the Scottish, English and Welsh census differ, they both attempt to navigate the same ambition: avoid use of the term ‘cis’. Other census questions, related to Identity characteristics, ask respondents to select the option to which they most closely identify. Questions require respondents to confirm an identity (for example, ‘I am white Scottish’) rather than negate an identity (for example, ‘I am not Scottish Indian’). The design of the trans and gender identity questions depart from this approach are they require the majority of respondents (those who identify as cis, estimated to be around 99 per cent of the population) to answer the way that negates and identity (‘I am not trans’). Ashley has noted how, in English, ‘currently, no word exists in our vocabulary for the broad category which includes being trans and being cis

O varză să-i zicem insecta verzei încă mai greșesc în formularea poeziei mele greșesc gramatical se spune că poezia se scrie în cuvinte nu știu dacă patia mea este patia poeziei mele sau străinul psihotic  doarme în camera mea nu știu de unde până unde cuvintele astea din propoziții propozițiile astea din frază frazele astea din text înseamnă ceva pentru poezia patia mea știu că uneori rămân așa dus într-un punct fix iar cuvintele se destramă până când pentru mine fiecare cuvânt destrămându-se de alte părți ale cuvântului destrămat are aceeași semnificație o repetiție nemăsurată sunt un poet agramat în viață care acum învață să scrie și să citească poate dacă poezia era filtrată de cuvânt sau poate nemărturisită eram  nebunul de la scara blocului trebuia să spun despre acel ceva ce nici eu nu știu calamități obsesii neajunsuri te atrag și ce stare de bine când nu mai am nimic de trans-scris eu cred că sunt o țeavă ruginită care traversează un insectar

As long as I am subjected to this unconsented reading of my body, I will desire nothing more than facelessness. I think of Christiane, whose father insists she wears the mask around the house so she gets used to it rather than taking it upon himself to accept and celebrate her face as is. It is violent to ask trans people to mask ourselves so it is easier for others to “understand” us, and this is not understanding at all. An effort to understand trans people looks like giving us space to tell our own stories to outnumber the stories that highlight trans tragedy and monstrosity, so that we may see many versions of ourselves reflected in the world. The power in a reflection is not in the simple fact of seeing a physical replication of ourselves but of knowing that there is more of us beyond that. That we are both here and there, expanding past the signifiers of our bodies.

I am a woman entombed in the body of a man.

Yes, I am as one who tries to sail against the current up over a waterfall, and I feel that the current has grabbed me and overpowered me ...... I no longer know where it leads me ...... perhaps towards complete destruction ...... and yet I cannot get off the boat now that I am halfway, the decision has been made ...... there is no turning back.

Yes, I am as one who tries to sail against the current up over a waterfall, and I feel that the current has grabbed me and overpowered me ...... I no longer know where it leads me ...... perhaps towards complete destruction ...... and yet I cannot get off the boat now that I am halfway, the decision has been made ...... there is no turning back.

Transness is not a masking but rather an unmasking, a stripping of a performance expected of us by way of biological essentialism. For some trans people, this process of unmasking may require physical changes. Some may identify with this notion of the death of a past self. For others these changes are not necessary. They may feel as if they were never masked at all or that no physical representation accurately approximates their truth. Unmasking can be a delicate process as a nonbinary person because of its diversity of expression. Androgyny, for example (and not in any way synonymous with nonbinary), doesn’t look a certain way, though gender is ingrained in society such that liberal readings are applied to everyone, sprinkling gender on everything from haircuts to careers to alcoholic beverages. In this way, presentation, when considered for the purposes of legibility, feels futile. I can wear oversize button-down shirts that drape on a bound chest, slouch my shoulders and trim my hair short to avoid being read as “cishet woman” at the very least. But I am more fluid, more expansive than an identity built off of what I am not.

but I'll often find some of my best ideas come up while I am reading fiction.

Atunci mi-a venit să cad în genunchi! N-am căzut însă, ci doar am început să Hulesc încet și să Blestem zdravăn, dar numai pentru mine: - Duceți-vă, Compatrioți, la Poporul vostru! Duceți-vă la Poporul vostru sfânt și poate Blestemat! Duceți-vă la creatura acelui sf. Întunecat, care de veacuri tot crapă, și nu poate crăpa! Duceți-vă la Minunația aceea a voastră sf., blestemată de toată Natura, care se tot naște și tot Nenăscută rămâne! Duceți-vă, duceți-vă să nu vă lase nici să Trăiți, nici să Crăpați, ci să vă țină întotdeauna între Ființă și Neființă. Duceți-vă la Molatica voastră sf., să vă Moleșească în continuare. Vasul s-a întors de-a curmezișul și a plecat, iar eu tot mai zic: -Duceți-vă la Dementul, la Nebunul vostru sf. Ah, poate Blestemat, să vă Chinuiască, să vă Căznească, cu salturile, cu nebuniile lui, să vă umple de sânge, cu Răcnetul lui să vă Răcnească, să vă urle, cu Cazna să vă căznească, Copiii voștri, nevestele, la Moarte, la Pieire, el însuși pierind în pieirea Nebuniei lui să vă Înnebunească! Și, Blestemând așa, am lăsat vasul în urmă și am pornit spre oraș.

Așa că merg și merg, Merg spre țelul meu, și nu știu ce am să Fac, dar ceva trebuie să Fac. Ah, de ce Merg eu? Dar Merg, Merg, pentru că alții Merg, și așa împreună, ca oile, ca vițeii, ne îndreptăm spre acel Duel, iar planurile sunt zadarnice, intențiile zadarnice, hotărârile la fel, fiindcă, atunci când este constrâns de oameni este pierdut ca într-o Pădure întunecată. Așa că Mergi, dar rătăcești, și hotărăști ceva, îți planifici ceva, dar Rătăcești, și chipurile pui lucrurile după voia ta, dar Rătăcești, Rătăcești, și spui, și faci, dar în Codru, în Noapte, rătăcești, rătăcești...

Advaita   You may be asking: how am I responsible for my karma? How can I change it? One popular Western theory is that when we are born, our lives are like a clean slate where nothing is written. Each life develops as a result of its surroundings and the forces acting on it such as parents, friends, society, their dominant culture, etc. However, TransZendental Introspection teaches the eternity of life – that I’ve lived countless lives before this current manifestation. This means that when I am born, I am not a collection of blank pages, but rather pages with countless impressions. In TransZentalism, life is forever existing in the cosmos. At times, it is manifested; at other times, latent. When I sleep and awaken, my conscious mind awakens and my body is refreshed. My consciousness carries on in a sub-conscious state between sleeping and awakening. Similarly, my life continues eternally in alternating states of life and death. Therefore, death is a part of the process of living.  Karma is a Sanskrit word that means ‘action.’ It is the accumulation of effects from the positive and negative causes I brought with me from my former lives, together with the causes I make in this life, thus shaping my future. My thoughts, words and deeds are manifested in my appearance, behavior, attitudes, good and bad fortune, where I’m born or live - in short, everything about me is the effect of my karma. Unlike some philosophies, TransZendental Introspection does not consider one’s karma or destiny to be fixed; since my mind changes from moment to moment, even the habitual and destructive tendencies I possess can be altered. In other words, I have in me the potential to change my destiny.  Last but not least, Advaita is the non-duality - The Oneness, the fundamental quality of everything conscious.

I want to talk to them about literature or art or music or politics or movies or even what they want for dinner. I want to hear about who they are and I want them to see who I am, underneath the trans body and all that goes with it. With that in mind, when I do come out to someone, I want him or her to feel free to ask away—and then I want to talk about the weather.

1969 Pontiac Trans Am. It was painted flat black with green metal flake flames up the hood, over the roof, and down the trunk, factory Pontiac rally wheels cut and made 8” deep in the front and 10 ½ inches on the back.

It was to be the longest flight I had ever made in my young life and one of the most interesting. Having always been interested in the magic of aviation I knew that the DC-6B, I boarded was an approximately 75 seat, trans-ocean, Pan Am Clipper. It would also be the last long distance propeller driven commercial airliner. The only difference between it and the DC-6A was that it didn’t have a large cargo door in its side, and it was also approximately 5 feet longer than the DC-6A. 1955 was a good year and people felt relatively safe with Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House. “I like Ike” had been his political motto since before he assumed office on January 20, 1953, even many Democrats held him in high esteem for his military service and winning the war in Europe. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked diligently trying to ease the tensions of the Cold War. He did however fail to win over Georgy Malenkov, or Nikolai Bulganin who succeeded him, as Premier of the Soviet Union in February of 1955. As a moderate Conservative he left America, as the strongest and most productive nation in the world, but unfortunately because of his lack of diplomacy and love of golf, failed to prevent Cuba from slipping into the communist camp. WFLA inaugurated its broadcasting in the Tampa Bay area on February 14, 1955. The most popular music was referred to as good music, and although big bands were at their zenith in 1942, by 1947 and music critics will tell you that their time had passed. However, Benny Goodman was only 46 in 1955, Tommy Dorsey was 49 and Count Basie was 51. So, in many sheltered quarters they were still in vogue and perhaps always will be. I for one had my Hi-Fidelity 33 1/3 rpm multi stacked record player and a stash of vinyl long play recordings shipped to Africa. For me time stood still as I listened and entertained my friends. Some years later I met Harry James at the Crystal Ballroom in Disneyland. Those were the days…. Big on the scene was “Rhythm in Blues,” an offshoot of widespread African-American music, that had its beginnings in the ‘40s. It would soon become the window that Rock and Roll would come crashing through.

three modalities of the other: the imaginary other—my semblant, my fellow-man who is simultaneously like me and my competitor, the one with whom I am caught in the struggle for recognition; the symbolic Other—the trans-subjective symbolic order which regulates the space of interaction between me and my semblants; and the real other, the impenetrable abyss of the Other’s desire, which can be elevated into the absolute Otherness of god.

There’s nothing lesser about friendship, nor is there anything wrong with who I am, I know this to the roots of my soul. It’s the only thing that keeps my head up when others in this village behave as though I do not belong, simply because I sing in a language they’ve forgotten and love in a way they refuse to understand.

Novelist Jason Reynolds does a wonderful job of expanding on the reasons why: If you say, “No, all lives matter,” what I would say is I believe that you believe all lives matter. But because I live the life that I live, I am certain that in this country, all lives [don’t] matter. I know for a fact that, based on the numbers, my life hasn’t mattered; that black women’s lives definitely haven’t mattered, that black trans people’s lives haven’t mattered, that black gay people’s lives haven’t mattered … that immigrants’ lives don’t matter, that Muslims’ lives don’t matter. The Indigenous people of this country’s lives have never mattered. I mean, we could go on and on and on. So, when we say “all lives,” are we talking about White lives? And if so, then let’s just say that. ’Cause it’s coded language.

I don't have to know every why of who I am to know the truth of my existence, and know that I can only find happiness by embracing that truth. It doesn't make sense to me to try to reduce an enormous spectrum of human experiences to an on/off diagnostic, rather than following the more complicated and rewarding journey of investigating the totality of the human animal.

i am not interested in a feminism that excludes trans women

I am nonbinary. I am a sex worker. I am Espi.

I am Trans. This is MY struggle and MY fight. You can be an ally, a friend, a lover, or simply leave me alone. I have enough pain, doubt, and crisis to fill a warehouse. So please, just let me be on my own battlefield in peace.