The mental patch on my vision, today, is increasing.
Month: June 2015
Things that make me happy.
I said yesterday I’d post of happier topics. So what pops into what is quickly becoming my new newsfeed?
The American Supreme Court has judged that the constitution guarantees the right to Equal Marriage!
(Ignore the fact that article uses the term “gay marriage” and “same-sex marriage” instead of Equal Marriage).
While yeah, I’m in Scotland (we’ve had “gay” marriage for all of six months now), it’s kind of cool that today we’ve turned another corner towards, you know, actual equality. Now if we could make people call it Equal Marriage instead of Gay Marriage, we’d be on to something.
So while we’re at it, I thought I’d post some things that make feel that “gay” thing in a whole other way. That’s right. I’m talking about HAPPY! (Hey look I made a really bad joke).
Thursday
I logged into facebook this morning at 4pm and found, again, that insistence that I provide ID to be allowed to continue to use their service. Only this time there is no week to find it. I’ve used it to say goodbye.
It feels a little like part of my sight is patched out. A constant rectangle on the right-hand side that I can’t access any more. When I open a new tab on chrome, it gives me, below the google search bar, eight of my most commonly used websites; one of them is facebook. I’ve gone there a few times without thinking.
I’m now blind to what my friends are doing or saying. I won’t be invited to events, or informed of meetings.
Leaving facebook at the moment feels a little like moving home. I reach for the scroll bar and start trailing down my newsfeed, looking for interesting excerpts from my friends lives, and feel almost guilty. I feel like I should be cutting down my time on it, in perpetration for eventually being facebookless. It’s been a part of my daily routine for around a decade now; I joined it when it was merely a method of inviting your student friends to the pub after a day of procrastinating in the labs.
I’ve posted on my groups. Said goodbye. Handed over the keys to people I trust. Pointed out alternate methods of contact. It might be interesting to see which friends I maintain regular contact with. Which ones I actually love enough, and actually love me enough, to make an effort to catch up.
A couple of my friends have shared yesterdays post, which I love. So much so I want to encourage it. I want there to be discussion on this. I followed some of the discussion on one sharing until the overwhelming opinion became that, because I’m nor prepared to allow facebook to mine my data, I’m not paying for the service and should therefore leave. I can see the point behind their opinion. It makes me feel like a petulant child, pouting because they didn’t get their own way.
There was always going to be more than one side to this.
I’m still not sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. Will I log in and be asked for ID, only to refuse and be locked out my account forever. Will nothing at all happen, this week of anxiety becoming nothing more than a drama I’m left to feel like I exaggerated and played up until it became more than it was?
I’ll only really know when it comes.
#mynameis
Hello.
My name is Steve.
Well, no, it’s not actually. Like any parents, nearly 28 years ago, my parents were presented with a bundle wrapped in cloth and gave the wriggling pink mass a name. As far as names go, it was a pretty good one, actually. It had sentimentality and tradition. It sounds nice. I can write it down on official documents and feel good about it.
But it doesn’t feel like my name. It feels like a strangers name. It feels like someone I used to be, and now I’m not. I’ve grown, shed my skin, moved to something else, learned about myself and grown further. I’ve loved people, lost people, joined communities. Laughed, cried, and all those human experiences. I’ve changed; It’s a full 28 years, nearly, since I was given that name, after all.
At the end of last year, and the start of this one, I started on what very much feels like a new journey. After six years of contemplation, discussion, and trying to do the right thing for myself, I came out as genderfuild.
I’d been inching my way towards it before that. I didn’t like the fact my online profiles were set according to biological sex, so I changed the ones I could and hid the ones I couldn’t. Then, after a while, that wasn’t enough to keep the nagging dysphoria at bay, so, on one of the more accepting websites that allowed you to pick genders and display them right by your name, I picked “genderfluid”. I discussed this change with close friends and new strangers, weighing my reasoning and trying to find the words for what I could feel in my body and mind.
I discussed pronouns with other genderqueer people. With people who couldn’t understand how I felt no matter how hard they loved me and tried. With people who threw back transphobic rhetoric. I was asked about my genitals, I was asked about where I wanted to go with this; surgery or hormones or… I was invaded with questions. Stripping back my ideas as I tried to find the source where I could stop the bleeding of a pain I knew was real but couldn’t find.
I’m not male. I’m not female. I’m not genderless. I am female. I am male. I am genderless. I’m both. I’m one. I’m all. It changes day by day. Some days I want to slice the gender modifiers away. Some days I’m fine with the way my body moves and exists.
So I announced it. I wrote it all down. I am genderfluid. Please use they pronouns. This is not a phase. I repeat, this is not a phase.
By this point I’d whittled my friends down to the ones that understood. I’d pulled in love and understanding by being open and honest. I’d discussed everything so readily. I lived and loved, for the most part, in a small bubble of society I knew would understand anyway, I knew they knew this had been a long time coming and I knew I was advancing into the arms of acceptance.
So while coming out was a big deal, it wasn’t sad.
But outside my bubble, there are always going to be people and entities that do not understand. That don’t get that this was a long time coming, a decision not taken lightly, an agonising journey. And with one move, one of them swept me away.
Facebook.
They want my birthname. They want my identification, scanned, sent off. To change my name to the birthname I abandoned a decade ago. To subject me to being misnamed and misgendered on a daily basis, instead of once every little while at a doctors office or council desk.
I felt something crumple inside of me, that day. I stared at my screen and knew, overwhelmingly, no matter what, I was going to face people who don’t want to believe my gender is real. Who didn’t appreciate my desire to keep that name hidden in documentation away from the tips of my friends tongues. I want my friends to call me by my real name, not my birth name.
I don’t want to change my name, officially. I want to keep that small piece of tradition, of the hope and love my parents had for me when they were presented with me, 28 years ago. I don’t want to have to explain to them why the baby there were given then is not same person now, to go through the backwash of questions and assumptions and misunderstandings. Not right now, anyway.
So I’m stuck. Nearly adrift from something I’d used to build a network of support and understanding. I’ve had people suggest other methods of staying on facebook; but there’s no fight. They can still do it to other people. They can do it to me again. It will change nothing. I will be forced to live a part of my life as someone I’m not, one way or the other.
I might as well pick the one way that feels true to myself.
candycanesteve 