Another Dear Friends: Trans 101

All right, I wasn't expecting to do this, but I'm taking a detour into the deeply personal again in order to explain some things about myself that I think people should know. It's pretty basic trans 101 mixed in with personal issues. Mostly this is aimed at my real-life friends, who I really owe a better explanation to.

So, some of you guys know this. Some of you probably know hints of it. Basically, I'm transgender; more specifically, genderqueer. I'm not a girl, I'm not a guy, I'm something else entirely, regardless of the physical sex I was assigned at birth. Biologically and genetically I have an assigned sex, the thing that determines my bits and pieces, but the gender that I identify as, the gender in my brain and the part of me that makes me myself, is a different one than my assigned sex. That is what being transgender means, though it can include other people as well; the opposite of transgender is cisgender: when your gender and your sex match up.

It's kind of been hell for me to come to terms with. My actual gender, in the nitty-gritty, is what's sometimes called "neutrois," which I can't pronounce, meaning neutral or null-gendered. I also have what you might call "moods," where I feel more male or more female. It's all very difficult to explain, which is why I just use the word "genderqueer." There are some political associations with that word, which I don't exactly like because I'm not trying to be "rebellious" or "challenging" by my gender, it's just who I am. I have nothing against those who are trying to challenge the gender binary, but I do not personally consider that to be a primary characteristic of my gender.

The more important thing than the tiny details, however, is how this affects my life. For you guys, my friends, what I ask is that you try your hardest to remember that I'm genderqueer and trans. I'm still me, just a little more open and less confused (maybe). Try as hard as you can to remember to call me Kai. I wish that there were common use gender-neutral pronouns, but since I don't really think I like ze/sie/ey or any others at this point, for safety I'd prefer to keep the "she/her" pronouns, and "they" in writing. But please don't refer to me as a girl or a woman or anything like that, because I'm not.

Being trans has a pretty huge effect on people's lives. Bathrooms, for instance, are something that I hate to think about. At this point, my physical presentation doesn't warrant any concerns, but having to use sex-segregated bathrooms is miserable, and I spend a significant amount of time planning to avoid them. Having to fill out applications that only offer male/female as choices for sex or gender, and listening to everybody everywhere conflating the two. Feeling like my mind and my body belong to two completely different people. Hearing people talk about the "opposite" sex and the differences between men and women and wondering where I fit into all of that.

This is a lot of stuff to deal with. It's probably pretty crazy if you don't know much about transgender issues. So I'm gonna link some stuff, and I'd like you to read at least the first link. If you have questions, feel free to ask me. There's no way I'd be able to get everything jammed into one post here. Some stuff to get you started...

Transwhat? - A really, really useful overview on trans stuff and what you can do to be an ally.
T-Vox Trans 101 - A wiki with gender info and basic question.
Debunkingcis - A livejournal community dedicated to working through cisgendered privilege.
Genderfork - A blog with pretty pictures and examples of other genderqueer and trans individuals.

Baby, I love you, but I just can't smile

A few weeks ago at my friend's birthday party, we played a game I haven't played since about second grade, called "Baby, I love you, but I just can't smile." In this game, one person goes up to another person and says something along the lines of "Baby, if you love me, please smile." The "victim" then has to say the name of the game without laughing and/or smiling. If they laugh, they have to do it to someone else. And so on and so forth.

While my memories of playing this as a second-grader are somewhat blurry, playing it in a group of 16/17-year-olds was definitely different, to say the least. I've always found it amusing to watch, because it's somewhat funny to watch people try and be as comically romantic as possible within the bounds of good taste. Unfortunately, I've conditioned myself to laugh whenever I'm nervous, so I ended up "it" pretty quickly, and I realized I had no idea how to do this to somebody else. Even though I consider myself not entirely naive with regards to sexual matters, it's extremely uncomfortable and unnatural for me to actually participate in even mocking them.

Another game that seems popular among the teenage population that are tough for aces is "Truth or Dare." Arguably this shouldn't be hard in theory, but anyone who has ever played Truth or Dare with an average group of teenagers has witnessed the tendency of players to go straight to "the good stuff;" i. e., the questions about "liking" people and having sex and all that jazz. The problem is, there seems to be a disinclination among teens to believe that it's possible for a person to not "like" someone constantly; Truth or Dare was actually what led me to making up the crush I pretended to have for a good four years. For aces playing with non-ace participants who aren't sensitive to asexuality, the game rapidly becomes either a disappointment or a case of denial.

I can only imagine how horrible playing games like "Spin the Bottle" or "Seven Minutes in Heaven" must be for aces, thankfully having never experienced them myself.

On the other hand, the one game that we do have a decided advantage with is "Never Have I Ever..." Dominating this game works best when playing mostly with people have been sexually or romantically active, but you can still knock a lot of fingers down with "Never have I ever had a crush on a boy...or a girl...or anybody else..."

An Apology and a Proposal

First off, I'd like to apologize for my amazing failure at maintaining this blog. It turns out that trying to start a blog while simultaneously coping with writing-inhibiting stress and massive amounts of schoolwork is not actually a realistic or even good idea.

As an incentive to myself to keep writing, I'm thinking about broadening my scope a little bit. This is also because I find myself with a number of tangentially related ideas to write about in my head which aren't quite in line with my original intent for this blog, but not too far off. This might include things like gender, non-ace sexuality, queer/LGBT issues, and potentially other topics as they relate to being a teenager. I'll try to stay ace related as best I can, though.

Another thing I'm considering is changing the URL of this blog, because what on earth was I thinking, "asexyback"? Really? I don't even like that song. This will screw up any links, though, so I'm not sure yet.

So, yes. Sorry. I'll try to do better and be a responsible not-adult-yet on my commitments.

Labels: A Love/Hate Relationship

Well, it's been a crazy...er, month, since I posted here last. But hopefully things are getting somewhat back to...well, manageable. ;)

Thanks to numerous conversations both online and in real life, I've been thinking about labels a lot lately. More specifically, about how I wished they worked differently. And more bluntly, I've spent an amount of time wondering if identifying as asexual is a very wrong thing for me to do at this point. What I concluded is what sparked this post.

There are always a lot of threads on AVEN about people who are wondering if they are ace. There was a discussion about prescriptive/descriptive asexual labels, and there was a brief wave of conversation about being to young to identify as ace. One point that some of these things seem to hinge on is the definition of asexuality (or any sexual identity, for that matter) as something that lasts for one's whole life. This is especially ironic given that the "What if it's just a phase" question in AVEN's FAQ encouraged me to change the way I viewed labels. Actually, I think that in general the ace community is much, MUCH better in its view of labels than the rest of society, which is wonderful.

In my experience, there are two main reasons why I feel labels are helpful: personal understanding, and interpersonal communication. The personal part is the part that makes me feel good to have a word that describes what I am and to know that there is a community of people who feel the same. The interpersonal part is the relief of having a jumping-off point when communicating who I am to others. Asexuality is, unfortunately, a label that usually requires a lot of explanation to other people, but at least it is some sort of start.

When I came out to my mother a month ago, she expressed (well, continues to express) a worry that I would box myself in by calling myself asexual. She insisted that A) I'm too young to know for sure, and B) that I should just say that "I don't know yet." I agree that it is extremely possible that I am too young to know my sexuality "for sure," I don't think that point B would be at all more beneficial. In fact, in the environment of high school, it would almost certainly be more difficult to deal with other students by saying "I just don't know."

Many people, my mom included, dislike labels and wish people could just "be." I sympathize with this, but I also think that it is very very difficult to do this in society. But labels can be helpful. When referring to my sexuality, I could explain that I feel no sexual attraction towards other people, find people of all genders but more often women physically nice to look at, and am possibly pan- or aromantic with a dislike for a platonic/romantic/sexual axis interpretation of sexuality, but it's easier to say I am asexual and let people figure the rest out as they get to know me. Likewise, when talking about my gender identity, I could explain that I identify between female and agendered with aspects of masculinity, but it's easier to tell people to use feminine pronouns and to not refer to me a woman. Similar situations affect my racial and religious labels.

My utopia-vision desire for the world is that we didn't have to use labels, that sexuality, gender, race, religion, and other labelled things wouldn't matter as much and could be accepted as they are without needing "labels." My more realistic wish is that there be more acceptance for a "descriptor" interpretation of labels; that people would accept labels as something that describe how we are, not a box that we must fit into forever.

What I've decided to do is to continue to call myself asexual with the understanding that it is a description of how I am now, and however other people wish to interpret labels is up to them. I'm not particularly interested in finding out who I am "100% for sure" at this point. I'd be curious to hear anyone else's views on labels, if you'd like to share!

Out.

Today I came out to my mom. On the whole, the situation is going moderately well. There is a lot of crap going on in my life. More details tomorrow, after I've slept a bit.

Figuring Myself Out, Part 2: Questioning

Okay, having gotten the "era" terminology out of the way, I'm going to examine the role questioning played in the changes between them and how it's perceived in society at large vs. among other queer people vs. among asexuals. Hopefully. To be honest, I'm not always sure what I'm going to get when I blog. It's new to me. (And I feel really pretentious referring to these "eras." I hope I don't come across as a self-absorbed snoot, it's just easier to explain everything like that.)

Starting with my personal experience, I was definitely not questioning my sexuality until the OMGWTFBBQ stage, and I'm not sure you could exactly call what I did questioning. It was more of a freak-out-and-reaffirm-my-heterosexuality-and-then-stop-thinking-about-it sort of thing. Most of my actual questioning came during the Bisexual and Schrodinger eras, which is the time period in which I seriously considered using the monicker "Questioning." The main thing that catapulted me into the Bisexual stage, I think, was starting to actually question my sexuality truthfully. I can pinpoint the exact date, more or less, that I moved into the Schrodinger stage, but I'm not sure exactly what caused it. I strongly suspect that it may have had something to do with my friend Eddie outing herself as bisexual, though.

For about a year before I began calling myself asexual, I had no word to describe my sexual orientation. I became very conscious of this during the conversation in which Eddie came out, which was prompted by another friend declaring herself straight and then asking us to declare ourselves. I am still thanking Eddie for taking the reigns, because while she was freaking out about telling us she was bi, I was freaking out for another reason: having no label. At which point I buckled down and said, "I need to figure out what to call myself."

Also around this time, I told someone (Eddie) about my internal struggle for the first time. Rereading what I said, it was pretty clear that although I knew the word asexual, I still felt not that I was ace but that I just didn't know my orientation yet. But I had a serious problem with saying I was "questioning." While earlier I refused to say I was questioning my sexuality more or less because of internalized homophobia, I now had different issues. I felt that questioning, as often included in the Alphabet Soup Queer Acronym, refers mostly to what I called "straight people questioning possible gayness." I'm sure it's meant to and should encompass more than that, but I didn't feel comfortable applying that to myself when I was really questioning whether or not I was sexual at all.

Questioning is not a comfortable thing, and it's not something easily understood by those who have never experienced it. Because my early discussions about questioning were with someone who had gone through something similar, I wasn't particularly conscious of it. Discussing it with heterosexual people made me rather keenly aware of how uncomfortable I am showing that I still question parts of my identity. I wonder if this may have to do with the "ideal asexual" idea floating around, as the ideal asexual apparently is very secure in their identity. The fear is, however, at least a partially legitimate feeling, because revealing questioning to the unaware leaves you rather open to queries. Not that queries are a bad thing. But it can be tiring to have to counter the "right person" argument while you're still trying to figure out everything for yourself.

If it makes a person insecure to express questioning among mostly enlightened friends, society is outright terrifying. Outside of queer circles, uncertain identity isn't something that is expressed. Ever. Which is sad, because I think it's more common than people realize. Among asexuals, questioning seems to be universally expected. Observe the number of "Am I asexual" posts at AVEN. In the LGBT community, there is an accepted space for questioning, and like for aces there is an expectation that most queer people were questioning at some point. In sexualnormative, heteronormative, cisnormative society at large, it's assumed that you know exactly what your identity is, and if you don't, you should keep quiet about it. If we ever manage to change that, I think it would vastly improve many people's lives.

Figuring Myself Out, Part 1: Eras of Identity

(My dad just had surgery, and it's not going the best, so I'll probably be a bit hard to find for a while. I may or may not have internet access for a couple of days. I guess I could always work from my phone.)

I'm now officially out to all of my friends (yay!), though the out-to-my-family thing is probably going to have to wait until my dad gets better. I've been talking to some of my friends, who are awesome, and decided that now would probably be a good time to document how I figured myself out, so I don't forget it. This, paired with the recent discussions on Apositive and the blogs about "real asexuals" and identification, led to some thinky thoughts on how I came to call myself ace, and how weirdly the progression of my identity fits into nice little eras.

The Huhwha...? Era- This was my whole life until I was fifteen or so. I'd never really thought about sexuality or knew it existed. The concept of sexual orientations was more or less beyond me. Through literature and movies I'd seen that people could like people of any sex or gender, but I didn't consider myself straight or anything else in particular. Around ages 14 and 15 I began to understand orientations but for some reason never considered my own. I had vague ideas about growing up and getting married, but hadn't really thought about it.

The Heterosexual Era- This lasted for about a month in my second year of high school. The transition occurred suddenly when, during a heated conversation with a bigotted student, I said frustratedly, "You don't have to be gay to support gay people! I support them, and I'm straight!" The next month was spent going, "Huh, I guess I am straight."

The OMGWTFBBQ Era- Not exactly sure how long this lasted, but it consisted of me wondering, "Am I straight? I think so. Actually, I think that gender and/or sex shouldn't matter about loving a person, theoretically. I'd be honest if I liked girls, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I got it." This was followed by a lot of Not Thinking About It.

The Bisexual Era - This was another few months of my second year of high school. More realistically, it was less of a bisexual era and more of an "I'm not straight" era. It was a combination of the theory from the Hetero Era and my figuring that if I wasn't straight and wasn't lesbian, then I had to be bi. It was pretty quickly overtaken by......

The Schrodinger Era - Most of the second half of my second year of high school was filled by various levels of what I call "Schrodinger's sexuality." After conducting a statistical analysis on my history of attraction to people (not even kidding about the statistical analysis), I came to the the conclusion that I was some sort of Schrodinger's cat, being unable to know my orientation without having had any experience. At the end of the analysis I added, "in effect asexual." Though I was familiar with AVEN (vaguely), it wasn't meant in the actual Ace-identified Asexual way as much as a descriptor of my current sexual practices.

The Asexual Era and The Ace Era - these two are similar enough to combine. During the Schrodinger and Asexual Era, I became more comfortable with calling myself asexual, but still was fairly unconnected with the asexual community. This changed, for some reason, during a conversation about sexuality and the media, and I made a conscious decision to explore my identity and become more aware of the community, thus leading into the modern Ace Era.

So I took a rather weird, complicated journey to identify as asexual. I've seen other people with even more confusing stories. Ily, on her blog here, mentions that she went from identifying as "totally straight" to "totally asexual." I find it interesting that everyone seems to have a unique story as to how they figured out they were ace. Part 2, up as soon as I finish it, will delve into more detail about the questioning part of asexual identification.