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Chasing Romance

December 3, 2008

No, not me! I’ve found romance, thanks so much for asking. I’m very sure that no more chasing after romance will be at all necessary for the rest of my life. But, I find it rather interesting sometimes to watch others ponder and dissect as they make attempts to “get there.” I have to admit that among the most interesting efforts to chase romance are those of my sisters. — Why is it the sisters who get involved in this much more often than the brothers? 

Of course, I have some notions about that “why” as well. Likely as not they’ll be ill-received, those notions. What the hell? People talk, people write stuff that I read, I pay attention. Their thoughts and scribblings leave me with my own questions, responses, feelings, readings and ideas. So, if anyone thinks they have found themselves in this essay — think again. It’s not y-o-u. 

In fact, it’s all of us. But, I will admit to this. I read a lot, so you might, those who read this, come across something you’ve written or thought or you may see some way of acting that in some way resembles you. Don’t worry about it. You are you and this essay is me. OK, got that? I have it on good authority that I am not you and that you are not me — so, regardless what you may think, this is not about y-o-u.

It is about something I see in humans in general: a desire to be loved, to be loved unconditionally. Whatever that may mean to you, or to you. That idea is often enough stated along the lines of, “I just want to be loved as me.” But, I have to ask, who is that? That me you wish to be loved as? 

In the cases of men and women of transsexing histories is that the you of age four or twelve or sixteen when you realized that something badly mistaken had gone on and that you weren’t embodied quite the same way as other girls or boys?

What about so-called “natal“ men and women? (I don’t usually feel comfortable using that “natal” word: it kinda makes me wonder if only some human beings are born and others of us, like Pallas, spring full-grown from the heads of fathers and mothers! Or perhaps we are the spawn of the dragon’s teeth that Cadmus sowed at Thebes?) Do those “natals” manage to find a “true” me that has endured unchanged in any particular since … well … let’s say age thirteen? 

If it’s not that sort of unchanging me we talk about, then what me is it that people wish to be loved as? A post-op me? A pre-op but full-time transitioned me? What about the me of age thirty-five or forty-three or sixty-eight that preceeded the current model? Is that the me I wish to be loved as? And who or what is it that my lover must bring to our relationship? It seems to me as if a lot of the effort and the responsibility for making this relationship right rests on the lover, rather than whichever me I choose for that person to love. 

Now, here, reader, comes one of the parts that’s likely to be ill-received. Honestly I don’t find it odd that women with transsexing histories seem to express this desire more often than do men of transsexing histories or either of the “natal” brands of men and women. My guess, of course I am gonna guess and rest assured that my guess is something very close to where I believe a lot of this longing for being loved as me comes from in transsexing people, my guess is as follows. 

Male-bodied people in our culture almost all of the time rely on someone other than themselves to bear the responsibility for relationships. In point of fact, males are almost always taught, or have been almost always taught, that their emotional lives are not worthy of spending their time with: they have, usually, women or other men who do that for them. Male-bodied people go out into the world and leave most of the responsibility for the emotional aspects of relationship to be borne by the women in the relationship. It’s not particularly earth-shattering it seems to me that women of transsexing histories have often come to their adulthoods without knowing a hell of a lot about the emotional sides of relationship.

They’ve very often been able to withdraw from that; and transsexed women, in that regard, are often as clueless to begin with in emotional connection and contact as are many, most, male-bodied people. In point of fact the effort of transition is often made, among those with the economic means of seeing it through from beginning to end, rather quickly: two or three years. During that time the transitioner most often is very goal-directed and tends to focus more on the way she looks, how to finance or pay for hormones, surgeries, etc., and in trying to learn things such as walking, talking, “presenting” one’s self “as a woman.” Her focus is thus toward a material goal and the more emotional and “inner-directed” parts are less observed, I suspect, in fact than they are in talk with one another. 

Well, that’s my take. It may not apply to you, but as a guess I’d say I’ve read and experienced exactly that most of the time I’ve spent among other people with transsexing histories. Often I imagine slower really is better as there’s a good-deal of re-tooling that’s required in many cases, especially among older transitioners (let’s say over thirty) who’ve spent a good deal of time presenting themselves as “men.”

Thus, when the material aspects of a transition are ended one can look and walk and talk like a woman; but often the emotional aspect of living her life in that fashion has been neglected. Especially in regard, it seems to me, in the ways we look at discussing the emotional and mental aspects of our lives with the therapist-gatekeepers. Those relationships seem to me, as I have said, to be 1) odious to the transitioner who doesn’t want to be labelled with a “mental-illness,” 2) is concerned more about passing the various toll-booths that will lead her to (Montreal, Pattaya, Scottsdale or Trinidad or a host of other places) where “the operation” will be performed, and, 3) emotional life is often determined by transitioners to be the emotions involved in “whether or not I pass” (another word I dislike, but that’s another essay) in regard to how she is being seen by others rather than in how she moves and balances within herself.

None of those aspects of our emotional life are usually deemed worthy of discussion by many transitioners, except with other transitioners. To express them might be read by us therapist-gatekeepers as somehow the “wrong” thing to feel and say. “What if she says I’m not really trans!” Yet another reason, for me, to end the “gate-keeping” function. It’s bad for my profession’s image among transitioners and results in negative impacts on my clients simply because they withhold so very much of themselves, including any real belief in the efficacy of therapy. Therapy becomes just another hurdle to get over. It has nothing at all, in the minds of many transitioners, to do with healing one’s psyche. OK, professional soapbox placed back under the desk. 

Now back to chasing romance. We all seem to do it, don’t we? Just a human quality to have some important one-to-one partner to be there while we negotiate our lives. People with transsexing histories are absolutely no different than anyone else in that regard. We look for love and acceptance. After transitioning I think we sometimes look for validation as well: “I’m real.” For most of us it’s not simply good enough to pinch ourselves to prove our “reality,” but we need the regard of others to confirm that for us as well.

Here comes a conundrum. How to find out without asking someone at which point I have lost all ability to believe whatever answer they give: because they now know! Yet, if they don’t know then I have to guess according to their behaviors around me. Yet, yet again, since my emotional life has been neglected and I am often in a position where I suspect that I don’t “read” people all that well, then … well, I hope you see the difficulty. 

Many transsexed woman face a dilemma they cannot solve easily. Most seem to think they should, at that point, tell a prospective spouse prior to getting deeply romantically involved, but there’s a fear that once the other person, usually male it seems, “knows” he may react badly to me? Will that be a deal-breaker and, thus, leave me even more alone in some psychic fashion than I was to begin with? Hard choices and difficult decisions and I completely respect whatever ones the transsexed person decides upon. 

I often think that so many, evidently about 30%, of MTF transsexed women find relationships of love and acceptance with one another as a sort of untying of that Gordian Knot. That result very neatly dissolves the conundrum and still allows a romantic relationship in which all things are known, understood. No, I’m not saying that is why you might be in a relationship with another transsexed partner. I’m simply saying that the social and emotional pressures coming to bear on people often ill-equipped to handle them could certainly be resolved in that fashion. Maybe in some cases they are.

Next, there are the MTF transsexed women who find, or desire, romantic relationships with other women. That too can be a conundrum in what to tell and how will I be accepted by her. Will she see me as “real” or as a “guy?” Generally the fear-factor of being discovered and physically assaulted after the discovery is not as acute with such transsexed woman. Statistically-speaking ther’s good cause for thinking in such a fashion. Women tend to not assault others with the frequency and with the undercurrent of being afraid of being seen or seeing one’s self as “gay” as do males.

We chase romance. We humans seem innately programmed to seek relationship and connection and the more of it we get the more we want to have. That is, I believe, a truth of human existence. It’s who we are, social animals, thanks to our heritage from those Miocene Apes I’ve mentioned before. I also belive we all wish to be accepted and loved for whomever we “are” at any particular point in our lives. When it comes right down to it, no one wants to be loved as a body part, or a collection of body-parts or as an ephemeral icon of something we call “beauty.” 

It also seems to me that objectifying among humans is about, initially anyway, as universal as the desire for relationship and connection. Are we really attracted initially to someone because of “her or his soul?” I suspect not unless we read other people very, very well and pay really close attention to them. I have to admit, in my memory, my initial reaction to Catherine was to find her long, thick red-hair and the dress she wore comforting. She reminded me of the girls I had grown-up with: hippy chicks, who I had always found easy to converse with. I recall thinking afterwards that she was an important person somehow for me, to be working where I had just been hired.

A couple of years later and we did become lovers. But that was preceded by a long and developing friendship in which I think we both managed to feel a sense of safety with the other. We found a congruence in poetry and music, in the work we both did and where we wished to go with that work that merged rather easily with the other’s. It still does.

That, that sense of safety, is perhaps the kernel of chasing romance. To say and believe that we wish to be accepted as me simply means that we wish to be held as ourselves, whomever that might be at any particular time. It means we wish to reveal our inner-life and our exterior lives to at least one other we feel we are safe with in doing so. Romance is nothing more than connection intensified to a point that one feels she or he can express anything at all to the other and not be exiled for it. It usually comes accompanied by a desire to give one’s body as well as one’s soul. 

I wish I had answers for those I know and have known who fear romance because of their pasts. I wish I could somehow gaurantee them acceptance and being held comfortably by another. Alas, I haven’t those answers. However, I do believe the answers are there, inside that person who writhes in indecision and fear. I believe that what is necessary is an internal search that so very many of my sisters have only found in terms of our transsexuality and in changing that to be physically who we are. I think what we often neglect, often due to the entire gate-keeping approach to transitioning, that interior comfort we can only reach through baring to ourselves ourselves.

Honestly speaking, the sisters I have found and find most congenial and most “complete” are those who have been fortunate enough to have had that goal for themselves: to discover one’s self. They have also seemed to have had therapists who focussed on healing the self rather than providing rote tasks of “gatekeeping.” My sisters have explored themselves, found themselves, and no one seems to imagine that they ever were anyone except the women they are. 

For them it’s not simply about the physical accoutrements of sex-change; it’s also been about living into themselves. I’ll name no names, but I am willing to believe that those of you who read this will recognize yourselves when you come to this point.

For those who still struggle, I’d suggest that you take some time, now that the material has seen itself through, to find a congenial therapist, counselor, confidante, or someone you trust who can listen and suggest as you do the difficult work of finding yourselves, your interior selves. I truly imagine it’s the one aspect of transitioning that you didn’t find necessary or found yourself fearful of.

On the other hand,  I do know one very well put-together woman who was so very grateful and connected to her therapist that when it came time for her to choose a name for herself she chose the name of the therapist she’d worked with. In my mind, that was truly an honor, for the both of them. They had both done their jobs and the results have been very successful. O, by the way, romance seems to have found her as well. Thus, the circle closes into itself. She doesn’t appear to have had to chase it. I like to think that that’s the way romance comes to us all.

Categories: Connection, Love, Psychology, Relationship, Romance, Transition, Transsexuals
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Comments: 9 Comments

Hand Me A Quaalude, I’m Much Too Happy!

November 26, 2008

One of the first things I do in the morning is … well, get up … kiss the partner and snuggle some, then wake-up my son so he can get ready for school. Only this morning he woke us up! He was already mostly dressed: “Mom, where’s some winter pants?” “Folded in the laundry-room, Ian.” He never seems to realize that the clothes don’t just appear in the drawers and closets without some human assistance. 

Then I travel down to the kitchen and start the coffee and, lately, the oatmeal (Ian refuses that in favor of whatever chocolate or graham cracker cereal he prefers that morning.) Afterwards there’s a fish to feed, a dog to feed and take out for a short walk, and then I release my loves for days at work and school. Afterwards the first place I go is usually my email account where Slate, WaPo, Huffington, Bilerico, Pam’s House Blend, and Alternet are on feeds. 

I read, then usually write before getting out of the house. Writing, you know, is VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS! Yep, I usually make sure to put on my serious face before writing, simply because I don’t wanna leave you readers fluff every day to waltz through and say, “Gosh, she certainly is upbeat and syrup-y. She on some sort of anti-depressant or mood stablizer?”

To come and write with happiness or joy would seem, almost, to be to fall into one of those categories of blog that ya just cannot take very seriously, wouldn’t it? I mean, ya know the kind, “O, I dreamed last night of fluffy sheep and I’m just everso excited that my baby’s cutting her first tooth or I just love life” kinda renditions of the world as the best possible of all worlds. Hardly the serious things that would be of interest to my readers!

I mean, already I sometimes get chided for not being “serious” enough. “Hey girl, doncha realize that Obama is gonna appoint Hillary as Secretary of State and we’re gonna be swamped again with Clintons?” Or, as has happened in the past “what a moron, you just don’t get how serious a matter this is.” 

So, today, still mulling over a conversation I had at Facebook last night with a younger transitioner, thinking I might find something in that discussion I could latch onto and write about, I instead called up the Alternet feed and there, at the top, was a piece cross-posted from Red Room.

A fellow (former) Nashvillian, Tim Wise, has analyzed to some extent the leftie version of being all-too-serious about the supporters of the President-elect. The piece makes a lot of good reading and since my younger chat-mate last night has this tendency to be both definitely right-wing and rather seriously into what they think of as “fun” (ya know, kinda a David-Letterman-chic irony and sarcasm, an on-the-edge-of-death sort of ennui?) the work of Mr. Wise struck a chord. I’d suggest you political-types who read here follow that link and read his essay. It is quite good and quite to the point. 

Life has those moments, doesn’t it? Things fall apart, you hear or read one too many whines or worries about “what is this gonna be like? The guys seem to ignore me. Life is hell.”) and you realize that you have fallen into this pattern that requires widow’s-weeds and ashes strewn liberally about the house and your clothing and you wonder: why the hell am I happy?

I mean, let’s face it, girls and guys, life, maybe especially when you’ve either a history of or are wanting a history of transsexing, simply is a very HARD THING. Women are still treated in all sorts of subtle and flagrant ways as if we are second-class human beings, trans-women are as well, the Right consistently wants to do away with homosexuality and trans-ness of all sorts, cars wreck, phones get disconnected because the money for the bill wasn’t paid, the price of gas has fallen precipitously and on top of it all, damn, the weather has turned very cold up here in the depressed Northeast. 

So, I called a guy in Trenton and asked, he’s that kinda guy ya know, if he didn’t have something to bring me down. Would he deliver it here? — OK, I really don’t know anyone anymore who sells drugs of any kind except for the nice people in Portland, OR who fill my scripts, the guys down at the local CVS and, as a matter of fact a pharm-tech I’ve interacted with on the Webz . But, heck, should I really be able to get up in the morning and feel pretty good about life? Isn’t there something plainly wrong with a picture that includes joy? Maybe I should still know someone who delivers!

Perhaps I’ve just fallen a bit too deeply in-love with Matthew Vaughn’s, Stardust. Catherine and I bought that last week and I’ve watched it three times since, enjoying the delightful story of a young man who jumps a wall and enters a world on the other side he never imagined existed. He even meets and gets to know a star! No, not just Michelle Pfeiffer or Robert DeNiro (who also have major parts in the picture,) but a real-live star. Ok, she’s really Claire Danes, but, what the heck, she falls from the sky and the young man meets her on the other side of the wall. OK, she plays a star. Kinda funny, no? A star playing a star?  

Anyhow, the movie’s fun and romantic and fantastic and just plain ole good. (Tell me again why we didn’t see it in the cinema, please.) It calls up in me feelings of calm and, dare I say it? H-a-p-p-i-n-e-s-s.

Shhhhhhhh. Be serious, Radha. No one is gonna give you the time-of-day if you continue this way!

But really now, aren’t there positive things, things we love in our lives, even in the midst of struggle and disappointment? O sure, it might be rather nice to see all sorts of radical changes that an Obama government would bring to the country: full-rights for everyone, a real economy rather than the paper-doll one we’ve labored with for the past thirty years, new faces in Washington to truly wash away the pundits and the same tired faces we got tired of listening to through the Reagan years, the Bush I years, the Clinton years and, o-yes-please, the Bush II years?

Wouldn’t it be nice if Fred Phelps managed to discover the one verse in the Bible he appears to have never read: Mark 12:31? How about if only the government could actually work in such a way that there’d be something embracing and truly good about this “city on a hill” land we live in? 

I know there are a lot of bad things that happen in people’s lives. I’ve even experienced a lot of those myself. I know that we get hurried and pressed and the various factions of the LTBG can be at odds with one another over a plethora of important causes and concerns. I do, really, understand that if our cultures continue on the way we have gone for the past thirty years that some rather nasty climatological changes are going to bring suffering and destruction and that most of our corporate honchos don’t care or try to find ways to make it all seem like some nasty propaganda mailed-out from the desk of Al Gore in order for him to cop a Nobel Prize and to scare the bejesus outta all the rest of us for some nefarious left-wing plot, Matt Drdge tells me so! Bill O’Reilly does too! I mean, what greater authorities are there?

Wars, rumors of wars, young’uns no longer respectful of their parents, trash tossed outta car windows and left to blow or linger along roadsides and through yards, young males of Caucasian, Hispanic and African heritages blowing-away one another in the cities, crumbling infra-structure and falling housing markets and, truly aghast at this, a stock-market that claims to prop-up everything gnashing it’s collective teeth as prices fall, rebound and fall further. *sigh* O my Goddess! was that a piece of sky that just conked me on the head!

Hand me a quaalude, please, I’ll eat it with my toast and coffee.

No don’t!

Instead I am just gonna feel good today. Who cares what the mechanic says? Who cares if the rent’s not paid or the toilet overflows, or the garbage-truck manages to drop the entire four loads from the dumpsters just across the parking lot? Who cares if the world has already gone to Hell (that ain’t gonna happen, but 87% of the folk in the USA believe something similar to that according to Gallup.) My goodness! We can be real goof-balls can’t we?

Ya know what I really want today? To find some way that I can get my hair to shine the way Claire Danes’ hair shines in Stardust. For a glow like that, I’d be more than willing to fall outta the sky and make a crater and have to limp around for awhile from the after-effects of the fall.

Or, maybe, it’s just time to take the good with the bad. — I seem to be overwhelmed from taking the bad with the good.

O, and have a nice day. 🙂 *hug*

 

NOTE: I was privileged to read a really lovely letter this morning from my friend’s, Abby, blog. Here’s the link. Who I Am and Why I Do What I Do. I found it loving and moving and hope you’ll click on the link and read it. Thanks, Abby. 

Categories: Barack Obama, depression, Feeling Good, Hearts and Minds, Love, Politics, Psychology, Transsexuals
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Comments: 3 Comments

Week’s End Potpourri: Looks, Love, Writing & Thought, Feminists & Sons

August 22, 2008

It’s been a busy week. The “Lookist” essay has gotten a good bit of discussion going, here and on various bulletin boards. It probably seemed controversial to transsexuals because, well, it was simply something that transsexuals have learned not to talk about because discussion in some areas simply causes tempers to rise and the word “elitist” to get bandied about almost as much as the word “privilege.” 

It is what it is and the personal responsibility is evenly divided between both sides of the issue, in my opinion. That I don’t like what the effects of estrogen on my body and face have been is my own responsibility to work with. Afterall, it’s a personal experience, just like the positive effects of estrogen on my body are. 

Lots of people are more than willing to take all the credit for those positive effects, but there is often little that people are willing to do to ameliorate those neutral, or worse than expected and hoped for effects. As Jennywocky pointed out in her comment from yesterday, “One of my best friends right now does not blend well. I might room with her. But she’s brave, and kind, and honest about where she is… and works so hard to fit in. I am glad she’s part of my life, and I’m willing to be risk what I have to be with her. There are those who don’t seem to care about their blending and are happy as they are. Is it a lack of support for me NOT to want to be with them?

People befriend those with similar goals, dreams, and ways of doing things. We remain acquaintances with others. Not all transsexuals have to be close friends. I guess the cowardice for me would be not in my avoiding the #2b’s who wouldn’t be my friends anyway, but someone like B who *is* a good friend and wonderful person but has to work very hard to blend.”  

I admire B, whomever she is. She’s willing to do what she must to help herself fit into a world that isn’t always fair. By the sound of it, she doesn’t hold any sense of blame for someone else. That seems a healthy stance to take. I will imagine that she may never be the world’s best-looking woman, but I expect that everyone who meets her will know that she is a woman, and a very enjoyable one at that. 

I suppose that summarizes for me the entire issue. Each of our struggles is involved with the stance we take in the face of whatever gifts or deficits life has given us. We can become bitter, blaming or haughty and egoistic in our reactions to those things. None of those responses is going to make us successful as human beings. Perhaps the key is simply to be human and to work very hard on ourselves to be humane as well. Name our faults, find ways to reflect them within ourselves and to change them. 

Some very wise people have told transsexuals that blending is 90% internal and 10% external. A lot of people disagree with that, remaining stuck to some extent in their own misery and doubt. I believe that most human beings will, after getting to know another, make their judgements based on the quality of human being they are presented with rather than on the superficial anyway. If I recommend myself as someone who’s easy to chat with and share a portion of life with, the people I am around will start to respond to that. Not to the superficial standard of beauty they might begin seeing me with.

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This blog is being written very late in the day for me. It’s the last one of the week, but the day has been very busy and chocked full of just plain life thus far. My partner got up this morning to go to her office in order to do therapy with a client. I got up and put on a pot of coffee which she had asked for and just sat downstairs waiting on her to descend.

Wow!! She really looked quite lovely! Her smile at me was radiant when she discovered the coffee ready for her in her travel mug. She grabbed it, gave me a mouse peck on the lips and said, “I love you,” got in her car, and drove toward the office.

Two minutes later the phone rang. Usually we screen calls, but this time I just knew it was her and picked up the phone.

“Radha, I just realized the appointment was an hour later than I thought. You wanna meet me at Cosi for breakfast?” Okay, when? “Well, it’s only an hour so just hurry and get ready and come on to Newtown.” Ok, I’ll be right there.   

So, I ran upstairs, took one look at my sleep-filled face and thought, “O, Goddess! I look like Hell-Warmed- Over!” But, she had said to hurry, so I brushed my hair, the product from yesterday still keeping it a little knotted and bunched in a place or three. Ran a wash-rag over my face, put on deodorant and a pair of jogging shorts and a T. Slipped on my Birk clogs, grabbed my purse and drove to Newtown to Cosi.

What? I didn’t even shave my legs and she’s still not there!! So I drove to her office.There she was at the front desk talking to one of the receptionists!!

She explained that the woman had just discovered she had breast cancer and was going to have exploratory surgery on Monday.  Sigh. It’s difficult to be outraged when your therapist-lover has stood you up to listen to someone who is afraid and depressed.

But, that is one of the absolute wonderful things about Catherine. She’s an absolute natural at the work we share and love. Her ability to find relationship is a major reason to fall in-love with her. 

I recall when we were colleagues at an inner-city partial hospitalization care facility. She had been hired to work with the severely mentally-ill as an art therapist. Always brimming with good-will and understanding for her clients, I found her the absolute best therapist among the eleven of us there. She was open and well-bounded. She was friendly but never too friendly and she was insightful far beyond her years. 

I remember her almost totally feeling at a loss when I asked her to sit-in for me in my addictions group. She had no addictions experience at that time and was very leery of what the higher-functioning clients would confront her with. I said, “Just be who you are. Watch, they’ll love you.”

She did; they did. All twenty-five wanted to sign-up for her art groups after she had facilitated the addictions group for three days.

Yes, it’s difficult not to love her. I haven’t tried. So, we went to Cosi together, had our breakfast sandwiches and lattes and she went back to her office while I drove home.

Bad things sometimes arise in my life and there are good things as well. But the absolute one most positive thing in my life is Catherine. She has taught me so much about womanhood that I have needed to know. She has taught me more of humanity and love than I ever expected to discover and all in the past seven years.

In case you haven’t been able to see, I adore her. But even better, I respect and admire her. It’s not that our lives are always blissful. She rather dislikes the time I spend writing. Especially this writing. “But I want you to spend this time with me!” It’s been a point of irritation to us both.

Yet, on Tuesday she read the blog for the very first time. Having refused to before then, she read while I was away that afternoon. When I returned she was reading email and I hadn’t realized she’d read the entire blog. She went to see a few clients and didn’t return until about 8:30 that evening.

I was checking the blog to see if anyone had read it that day. She came in and we kissed and hugged, gave one another an “I love you.” Then she said, as I started back to finish the comment I was replying to, “Come back, please.” I thought, uh-oh, More of the spend-more-time-with-me-and-write-some-other-time trope.

I went back to her and she looked down at me from her heeled height and said: “I read all of your blog today. …  Uh  … I loved it! You are such a fantastic writer. They are all just beautiful and I am so proud of my wife, Ms. Ladywriter.”

I melted, as I often do when she says wonderful and unexpected things like that. What else could I do? “I just want you to know, I realize now why this is so important to you. You love to write and are very good at it. Very good at expressing emotion and feeling, at defining your thoughts in words, and you’re brave enough to put it out there and share it with others. I’m so happy to be your partner.”

Yep, a toaster, a widescreen TV system, and a set of Michelin radials you can purchase with a MasterCard. Catherine’s love is priceless and so is she. I am the world’s most fortunate woman. 

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She’s right ya know. I do love to write. A week or so ago a friend sent me this summation: 

But yeah, I like what you write.  Don’t always agree with it.  So it goes.  Even the people I love and almost worship like Lewis Mumford or Thomas Merton I don’t always agree with.  Hell, I go back and read my own stuff and could argue with it from time to time.  Well, except Dr. Suess, I do always agree with the good Doctor.

But……….   It is thought out.  It is composed.  It is writing by someone who know what writing is and it (oh god how I love this, it almost makes me hot) follows logically from one thought to another into the conclusion.  Rare stuff more often than not.  And, its more than obvious that at some point in your life (but more likely, throughout your life) you worked on what you write.  You cared about what you write, and what the reader will think when they read it.  Me too, I just care about a different reader reaction.

I respect him a lot. Yes, we’ve had our ups and downs. Actually, mostly, time-wise anyway, downs. He started posting at a BB I was at and I simply found him maddening, trollish and aggravating beyond despair for the longest time. Yet, amid all of that, there was this bright light of intelligence and incisiveness that I grudgingly had to respect. 

That respect made me look deeper, and what I found was a very deep and genuine compassion that went along with an exceeding sharp wit, a determined wilingness to cut through bullshit and to the point, even if it was hidden amid some sob-story that one felt simply had to be respected (read: sympathized with, or pitied,) and a willingness to be spare and direct even when it pissed off everyone who read it. Or at least enough people that it seemed like everyone.

For months we had these verbal duels. I recall getting a number of positive responses from others when I’d catch out some petard he’d left hanging that I’d hoist him on. The guy people loved to hate.   

 Butcha know, he doesn’t abide bullshit and disingenuity very well. And he is a reader and writer, a very skilled one. He also had a Jesuit education to hone those natural qualities to a very sharp edge. And very gradually I came to see the good and true heart that is this man.

 I have come to respect and love him, even though he still sometimes affects others as fingernails scraped on a blackboard affect most of us.  He gets that, and gets the reasons for it happening, much better than most people who read on Internet. 

 And, my writing is something that I trained under real masters, and worked real hard – very hard – to master myself.  It is sharp, it is to the point, it is concise.  I’m sure it fools people, who expect people with PhDs to write in some dense, thick jargon that you need to spend a night parsing out just to get the syntax.  But, as you know, real good writers write in a way that other people can understand them.  So, from time to time (OK, more often than not) I piss some people off.  But that’s only because its so darn easy to understand what I’m saying, and that I write in a way that there ARE NO two ways to take it.  I’m sure more people would piss more people off if we didn’t have to sit around and wonder “What the fuck are they trying to say.”  Whatever my faults, that’s not one of them.  I’m pretty clear.

 … I don’t think most people understand how much they reveal when they write.  About what they think, how they think and who they are.  Not being well trained to either read critically, or to write well, they don’t see it, but I’m sure you do, because you have both of those skills.

And, because you’ve been trained to read, and read between the lines at that, you actually caught on to the fact that under that rather harsh writing, I’m most likely – in most situations – not a bad person.  In fact, in real life, I’m very soft spoken, with a very dry wit, well-educated, articulate, a great host, even better travel guide, forgiving and open minded to the max.  I’m sure that does not come across in most of my posts.  But writing is writing, and life is life, two very different skills.

That was the second most appreciated thing that’s ever been said to me about my writing. You already read the first most appreciated thing. Why is it appreciated only next to what my partner said? Because this man is intelligent and concise, not given to bullshit and innuendo. He says what he means when he writes and he writes well. When you read him you don’t read the off-the-cuff reactive and unformed opinion of most people who you read. 

Instead you read something that’s usually direct and terse. I felt honored that he wrote so much to me. I hope that more people become aware of the truth of this: “… I don’t think most people understand how much they reveal when they write.  About what they think, how they think and who they are.  Not being well trained to either read critically, or to write well, they don’t see it …” 

Lotsa people think they can simply use dictionaries and thesauri to write, That’s a fool’s game. They think that what and how they write reveals nothing at all that the words themselves do not carry in their meaning.

But yes, he’s absolutely spot-on. Writing is, indeed, a window to the mind and soul of the writer. Good writers, and I have known one or two: Jeannie Thompson, Rodney Jones, Thomas Rabbit, and John Bensko among them. Yep, they’re all poets, but they are all very good poets who can plumb the depths of language and the human heart to craft extraordinarily good works that reveal not simply themselves, but the reader as well.   

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Speaking of good writing, here’s some: from Monica Roberts at Trans Griot there’s this on the Olympics. Monica’s always a great read. 

Patricia Nell Warren has this piece on the Olympics and women at Bilerico. com. 

While over at Feministing, this was contributed on August 21st by annabel644. The essay rang a bell with me. We are, my partner and I, raising a ten-year old and one of our major concerns is how to maintain the child of privilege in such a way that he can maintain his own sense of humanity.

I suppose we are not so much concerned that he be a feminist so much as that he simply can be an open, honest and compassionate and caring human being, regardless the slings and errors of his very influential peers.

How do we do that? I suppose by showing him in our own lives that one can be profoundly relational with others and still be a man or woman and, more importantly a decent human being. I don’t know that keeping him totally away from violent toys or violent sports (yes, as I have written he’s playing the game he adores this Fall, football, as so far is doing it pretty well.)

In fact, if his responses at football practice are of any indication I’d say we are doing alright thus far in holding our own. The other night he was blocking a child who fell after their initial contact. The boy lay on the ground for a second and then arose. He was very much favoring his right foot. Our son pulled away from him while the coach was saying “why did you quit son?”  

I was a very proud mom when the child looked at the man and said, “Because he was hurt coach. I can’t hit someone who’s hurt.” 

So try to show your child how to be a good human being with some compassion and insight, and hope that the conditioning of our ego-building, welath-building and dog-eat-dog society doesn’t drum it out of him on it’s palying fields and in its classrooms. 

It’s never an easy task, hoping that one’s child’s heart won’t be too terribly crushed and deformed by the societal imperative. But, perhaps just modeling that relationship to others with them yourself will do more than many of us fear that it can. 

A feminist’s goal is the humanity of all. 

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Have a great weekend. I hope you’ll be back next week.

Categories: Connection, Feminism, Friendship, Love, Poetry, Relational-Cultural Theory, Transsexuality, Women, Writing
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