i dream of being possible

reflections on

SO. I sort of participated in the Feb 3, 2013 #transchat (this is a link to the topic). And here is a collection of my tweets. I know i used to archive some of the previous transchats, but that was before i accidentally deleted my account. And then start this new one.

And, for the most part, today’s chat isn’t worth archiving. Nothing of note really happened other than one d00d’s magical tour of his MRA manpain. Which was… so very exciting and new. No relaly. So fucking exciting. And so fucking new.

ANywya. I hadn’t really intended in saying much mostly ‘cause the topic was a little…

It was about engaging with our histories. And how we were perceived as children. Perhaps… a nicer way to say: back when you (likely forcibly) expressed your assigned birth gender. Something like that. It wasn’t very clear.

The reason i say it wasn’t very clear is this: my dad knew i was bakla before it really crossed my brain. He knew it. He treated me accordingly. And that was that. Of course… my mom, i suppose, did treat me like a boy. And, again, I suppose so did the people at school.

But. At least at home (and thus: when I went out in the world), i lived my life as burgeoning ladyboy. How does something like this really fit into the topic? Doesn’t relaly seem to.

And one thing about today’s transchat made something very clear: I was never a boy and i was never socialized in that way. Not when I can see that douchefuck trans man who derailed the entire discussion acting more like a man/boy that I have ever in my entire life. Even when i was allegedly a ‘boy’.

In many ways: this highlights the blinding whiteness of how this topic was framed. It asks

sometimes we do need to engage with how we were perceived when we were younger and what impact that perception, in the context of a patriarchal gender-policing society, has on us as adults

except. what happens when you are raised in a diaspora community that didn’t police your gender using white patriarchial gender norms? When you were perceived as exactly the gender you were but one that was actually at odds with the dominant social milieu that you grew up in? One could look at my ‘history’ and just say: ‘well, you are cis then’ but this doesn’t actually challenge the hegemonic force that white trans/gender theory is actually enacted when it frames thins like this.

Because. It remains true: that is how i grew up but i know live almost ocmpletely in the influence of white gender hegemony and this impacts my current life in many important ways.

(issues I”m raising here are somewhat anticipated by Avory’s last point for suggested ideas for discussion)

But all of this. plus the awesome fun super great exploration of one trans man’s manpain and the near absence of trans feminine people in today’s transchat makes it even more clear.

That we need to decolonize this discourse because these framings just allow horrendous poeple the opportunity to enact oppression in fairly subtle ways for all the ways that they’ve learned to parrot the ‘right’ ideas and words to couche their oppressive ideologies in ‘acceptable’ ways.

(see: the continuous invocation of ‘lived experience’ by the derailing trans man. and look: no one gives a flying fuck about your ‘lived experience’ if all you are doing with it is using it as an excuse to take a steaming shit on us. last: fuck you)

Or. HOw are we to engage with our histories when our conceptual spaces and selves are being subjected to colonizing ideologies about how we are to understand these hisotries?

an honest, healing, discussion about histories must cannot take place before decolonization. before we truly grapple with, as a ‘community,’ the notion that some members are actively and avowedly committed to upholding the current oppressive systems of power and how we give these people the space, platforms, etc, to erase history in favour of their fictitious bullshit.