Views from the Bridge

Of The Creation of Identity (Also the Creation of Religion) and Such

Posted by: on: October 1, 2013

This is part of a synchroblog event coordinated by queertheologycom. For more information about what a synchroblog is, please go here. We – me and Colin – practice different religions, so we are doing our blog together but not as a conversation like we normally do. Colin is first and I am second.

Colin, Terri

The world is constantly a cycle from winter to winter, summer to summer, spring to spring, or autumn to autumn.

I generally think of it as autumn to autumn.

This is inspired by the fact that as a young Pagan, I celebrate a holiday called Samhain, often referred to as the witches new year or Halloween. It is my holiday of renewal and restart. The end and the beginning.

It’s my favourite holiday for many reasons, ranging from the silly decorations and costumes the world outside of Paganism recognizes, to the deep spiritual connection I have with the day.

It, like many Pagan celebrations, has a deep connection to creation.

I also think that something I favour of this holiday is its lack of connection to gender, which might be weird, coming from a gender creative person. As a transman, I feel like sometimes my life gets swamped with that single piece of my identity. I was out and proud in high school, speaking at events, writing as a transperson for mine and my mother’s blog, and answering all of the intrusive questions that often come along with being trans – Wait, are you gay now? Are you straight now? How do you have sex? So you want a penis?

When my spirituality and religion started to become more important to me and I started going out of my way to help the two thrive and feel content within myself, gender wasn’t a thing I wanted to connect with it. Same with sexuality and romantic attraction. Because those are all important parts of my life and big pieces of what creates me, but not how I create my spirituality.

I create my spirituality with warmth and comfort. When I’m doing a circle, a ritual, or meditating, I’ll use symbols, items, and clothes that are meaningful to me, and not what is the ‘norm’ of a Pagan ritual. Such as I have a Life Energy candle that I light, but I don’t light g’d and g’ddess candles.

Outside of the ritualistic side of my spirituality and religion, I create sacred spaces throughout my life. In particular, I have an altar of sorts set up in my bedroom. I change it as it seems right through my journey to change it, and don’t alter it to the flow of the moon or to what holiday is closest – except for Samhain, but that holiday has a lot of specific importance to me.

The items on my altar at times make it look more like an altar – such as right now, it has an incense container, symbols of the five elements, my books of knowledge, a plate with the Knight’s Code of Chivalry on it, my Book of Shadows, and my athame – but sometimes looks nothing like. Previous to the current set up it was a picture a dear friend had drawn for me, a fake flower, a tiny chair with a very old stuffed animal that my mother gave to me, a shell full of little rocks that I like, and a single candle. It depends how my spirituality feels at that moment, and how the world is impacting me.

In the end, I create a lot of my own spirituality because I don’t feel tied to gender whilst I’m floating through the cosmos, and in Paganism, as in all religions that I have observed, there is a strong tie to gender. Which isn’t a bad thing. I do at times light a g’d candle, a g’ddess candle, a spirit candle, or all three.

But the point is I found a religion that fits how I feel, and the fact that I create a fair amount of my expression of it and my words for it doesn’t make it any less important or viable. In many ways, far more, because I created it, and it’s forever a part of me.

…

Thanks, Colin. I love that you have found a way to express yourself that meets the spiritual needs that you have. I think you know that I disagree with you about how we embody religious experience and that our bodies are central to the story. But, I think it is okay. I totally understand the need for a gender-free-zone. I love you!! Now my turn…

The theology or scripture that I find in scripture that I would like to queer is the creation story in John 1.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

This is a very familiar passage to Christians, especially those from an evangelical background that privileges the Gospel of John over other gospels. I confess that I used to find John “flinch” worthy, but now I am so in love with it – it is beyond ridiculous! The author of the Gospel of John (unknown) was a brilliant person (gender identification is also unknown).

Focusing on the word “Word,” we find the Greek word logos. Logos is tied to two understandings – one in Greek Platonic mythology translated “Reason” but derived from the verb lego which would be “to speak” and the other in Hebrew scriptural understanding translated “Wisdom” (sophia).

In one fell swoop, the author of John ties together:

  • Platonic reason, form and matter and how the entire cosmos is understood in the concept of the perfected form learned only by application of reason and never experienced as all matter falls short of the concept of its form (form is tree-ness, the matter may be a seed or branch or even a tree-but never the full expression of tree-ness).
  • Sophia, Hebrew scripture’s Wisdom in English from Proverbs 8:

8:1 Does not Wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?
22 The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
23 Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
26 when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28 when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
29 when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
30     then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
31 rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.

Additionally, the Goddess Sophia, in pre-Biblical literature, dances the world into existence.

  • And Jesus, in the Gospel of John in verses 1:14-18, co-identified with the Word as the Word become flesh.

John brilliantly packages the Word (Logos) , the divine feminine (Sophia), and the embodiment of God (Jesus).

Male and female tied together in the person of the child of God as grounded in Platonic thought as the perfect idea or form.

At a minimum, the author of John can be seen as unconcerned with traditional gender roles. In its most expansive interpretation, the person of the Word is intersex. 

So all of this is a big “so what” unless it informs my understanding of the Divine and my understanding of the world. What does it mean if the Word, Logos, is non-gender conforming? It brings an incredible freedom to be gender creative and still fall within the concept of the perfect idea of child of God. Who I am is good enough. Who you are is good enough. 

And in all of that, our bodies, no matter how we experience them, are good enough.

And God looked at all of creation and said, “It is very good.”

Shalom and Amen.

(c) 2013, Colin and Terri Stewart

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Of Gender and Spirituality … and such

Posted by: on: September 20, 2013

I am publishing today without Colin. This is still a conversation we had in the car! But somehow we are very bad at coordinating our blog posts together.

Well, Colin and I had an awesome conversation about gender and spirituality. I am an elder (provisional) in the United Methodist Church which means I am a pastor. He is pagan which means most of his practices are isolated since we live in the boonies.

I asked, “How has gender impacted your spirituality?”

His immediate response as a teen was, “huh?”

I explained a bit. Mark Driscoll, the pastor of a conservative mega church, has said that he needs to worship a manly Jesus. This makes my eyes roll back into my head, frankly. I asked Colin the same question again.

His response was something like…

…well, I have a ridiculous mother that lets me explore what I need to explore and I had a ridiculous confirmation teacher that let me find out who I am, and a ridiculous church that never said anything bad.

Ridiculous = Good.

I then asked him something like, “Reflecting back, you now practice an almost solitary practice of spirituality in your pagan practice. Do you think it could be because you were beginning to transform into who you are and gender boxes in church didn’t suit you any more?”

“YES! Gender does not come up in my spirituality. It is unimportant and unrelated.”

…

Colin’s spiritual transformation out of Christianity began about the same time he came out to his church. Not that they weren’t fully supportive, they were in the way they knew how which was to essentially shut-up and not say anything good or bad, but to go on as normal. But Colin is a community person, so he found his way to a Unitarian Universalist Church for a while and we will see what happens as he grows into full adulthood (geez, 17 already).

I see a link between his transformation, gender, and the church. Do you see a link between gender and your spiritual expression?

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Reflections on Sexuality, Gender, Attraction and Such…

Posted by: on: November 8, 2012

I have encountered definitions of human sexuality that embraced the whole person and described life as being lived out of our sexuality and specifically out of an energy of creative love.  The definition of sexuality as love energy that contains the “spiritual, emotional, physical, psychological, social, and cultural aspects of relating to one another as embodied male and female persons” is very inclusive.  However, when I approached my son, Colin, and engaged him in a discussion of what sexuality is and isn’t, the idea that sexuality is an overarching umbrella or container for our entire being and way of relating the world was rejected. Rejection did not come from a disturbance with the definition of sexuality, but came from attaching the word sexuality to that particular definition.  This led to yet another discussion of the words we use around sexuality and gender.  Our conclusion was and is that our language has not caught up with our ideas.  We have come together here to express some of our ideas and why we think our current language is not working.

Human sexuality is very complex.  It seems that a better word might be human relationality.  Using the word sexuality, in our society, seems to put the very special love energy in the realm of sexual activity.  Recdently, I worked as a Spiritual Director at the Strength for the Journey retreat for people living with HIV.  I discussed the inclusive definition of human sexuality and to the last person, it was rejected.  It made people feel like they were being defined in terms of sex.  That is very difficult.  Therefore, the first term up for renewal is what do we call this particular field?  Human sexuality among those whose sexuality has been marginalized seems to be hard words to accept.  Additionally, sexuality as we have been taught here is much more expansive than the socially understood definition.  Is there a better term?

Colin:  To me, sexuality is when you want to have a sexual relationship.  A sexual relationship is a relationship you have sex or intercourse in.  Sexuality for me and some of my peers is strictly related to intercourse.  I will never have a sexual relationship because I am asexual.

Within human sexuality, there are many aspects that make up the person and their lived expression of human relatedness / love energy.  There is their biology, sexual orientation, sexual expression, gender identity, gender expression, and romantic attraction.  All of these things get so tangled up in our social discussions that mainly center on sexual identity.  Am I missing anything?

Colin:  Not that I can see.  It feels like something is missing, but I can’t put my finger on it right now.

I am tempted to call these categories of human relationality or human sexuality.  However, borrowing a slang term, I think the word scattegories might be more appropriate.  It is nice to think that we are all on a continuum from one polarity to the other (masculine to feminine, for example); however, it carries a richer dimension that a simple continuum would suggest.  How we interact with people is situational.  We may act differently among different people.  Additionally, each component overlaps messily into the other components.  Separating out the components that make up human sexuality is nearly impossible. It seems more like buckshot being scattered all over a target—hence, scattegories.

Colin: Generally, I like defining these things separate and like to keep them separate.  Though I can experience them together, I generally experience them separately.  That is part of the reason I have the romantic attraction identities that I have.

In the video series, “Voices of Witness:  Out of the Box,” James Walton, lists the questions that society expects easy answers to.  The first question anybody asks of a new parent is, “Is it a boy or a girl?”  He then lists biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation as the things society are concerned with.

Colin: These are the questions that society expects, but I also think they are really ridiculous questions. The important questions are:

  • Will you love this child no matter who or what they are?
  • Will you see the goodness in each person around you?
  • Will you see that everybody has an important point of view?
  • Will you pay more attention to who the person is inside and less to temporary things like money, sex, and looks?

What Dr. Walton describes as biological sex, Colin and I often call primary sex characteristics in our conversations.  It has also been described as genitality, I suppose.  However, none of these definitions really seem to capture our bodies.  Biology seems to be the best word I can think of.  Who are we biologically?  That becomes bigger than primary sex characteristics and captures our hormonal and genetic selves also.  Is there a better word?  This embodied being that we are is the container for everything that comes after, so it would seem that getting this word correct would be helpful!  Traditionally, this is written on birth certificates as sex.  And the answer is girl or boy.  It is more complex than that.

Colin: Yes! It is more complex than that.  First off, people who are born intersex do not always have the same genitalia that would be categorized as male or female.  Secondly, if we want to think of it entirely from biology, biologically, I am male even though I was female assigned at birth (FAAB-female assigned at birth).  My brain which is part of my biology says that I am male.  Biologically, then I am both male and female.  Though, I would put those terms as FAAB and male because I don’t identify with the gender or sex of female.  I think you’re missing something here.  Biologically though I am both male and female, what of those two is more valid? I don’t identify as female; I don’t even really identify as FAAB.  I prefer to be just male or, if anything, a transman. Because I identify with the neurological side of my gender, is that more valid because I identify with it or does it have the same validity as my female genitalia?  This is why we need two terms around this and not just our biology.  It could be physical sex characteristics vs. neurological sex characteristics.

Gender is generally thought of as a social construct that expresses where someone lies on the scale of masculinity to femininity.  However, it is much more complex than that.  Colin and I have discussed ad nauseum.  Gender identity is different than gender expression.

Colin:  Gender identity is not easy to explain. It’s not just identifying this way or that way, it is knowing or being this way or that way or all ways or no ways.  That’s why somebody’s gender identity could be tree. It’s not that the person is identifying as a tree or with a tree, that is how their gender feels to them through the language we have to express ourselves with currently. My gender is male, regardless of how I express myself. I could use stereotypically female pronouns one day and my gender would still be male. Gender expression is how you outwardly show your gender to the world. That can be via personality, clothing choice, and other observable factors.  Gender identity comes from deep within and does not always match your neurological or physical sex characteristics.

Sexual orientation or sexual identity is who you are attracted to.  I am enthralled with the idea of the possibilities of multiple sexual orientations above and beyond homosexuality and heterosexuality.  I can think of pansexual, bisexual, and sapiosexual.  I would personally think there is a sexual orientation that focuses on humor.

Colin: In my school’s social justice group for gender and sexuality, Action Faction, last year we discussed the lack of orientations for things we thought there should be orientations for.  Such as a person who is seeking a Prince Charming or somebody who is attracted to humor. That’s part of the reason I like the term sapiosexual so much. It is defining what you’re attracted to and not specifics about their physical sex characteristics.  The terms androsexual and gynosexual refer to the gender identity of the person you are attracted to, not yours or their physical sex characteristics.  Sexual orientation is like a compass, it is what you are pointing to and drawn to. You’re drawn to your Prince Charming whether that person happens to be male or female or otherwise.

Sexual expression, on the other hand, is what you do with your body.  This has been called genitality.  However, there is plenty that is done with our bodies that is an expression of sexuality that does not include what is done with our reproductive organs.  Reflecting on the words or idea of expressing ourselves sexually, there seems to be additional categories.  I can think of monosexual to polysexual and hypersexual to asexual.  I have no idea what the correct terms would be for those two scattergories.  I am also given to understand that asexuality is not co-identified with a lack of sexual arousal.  It is very complex and very confusing to me.

Colin:  I think that the term that needs to be used here is physical expression, not sexual expression.  Not everything here is a sexual activity, but it is all physical activity.  Hypersexual and asexual are accurate terms and are basically an expression of how easily you get turned on.  Monosexual and polysexual are a bit more complicated. Both are terms that are used, however, words that are “something”-sexual are used as an identity like heterosexual. Monosexual and polysexual are ways of explaining how many people you are comfortable having a sexual relationship with.  Monosexual comes from monogamous while polysexual comes from polyamorous.  Personally, I think that monosexual and polysexual should not be terms.  It should simply be monogamous and polyamorous.  However, there needs to be something and this is something I don’t currently have words for.

Asexuality is your attraction to other people sexually.  It has nothing to do with sexual arousal, though many people who are ace (asexual) don’t experience sexual arousal. It is for this reason that there are people who are identified this way that masturbate even though they never want to have sex with someone else.

Last, there is romantic attraction.  It is here that I get very confused.  Romantic attraction is not the same as sexual attraction as far as I understand the youth talking to me.  Perhaps romantic attraction is related to sexual arousal?

Colin: I adamantly refer to romantic attraction as non-sexual attraction. No, romantic attraction is not related to sexual arousal. I divide non-sexual attraction into four scattergories. They are romantic attraction, romantic desire, aesthetic appeal, and mental appeal. Romantic attraction is like the butterflies you get when you get a crush on someone.  Romantic desire is the want to date or be stereotypically romantic with someone. However, you don’t have to feel romantic attraction to feel romantic desire.  Aesthetic appeal is what someone has physically appealing to your taste and mental appeal is what someone has mentally appealing to your taste. You can have any of these attractions for anybody mixed in any combination and it is the reason why I have four non-sexual attractions I identify with.  I identify as panromantic, platonicromantic, lithromantic, and sapioromantic.  Panromantic means I am attracted to people regardless of what their gender is.  Platonicromantic means I want to date that person or be stereotypically romantic with them but I don’t have romantic attraction for them.  Lithromantic is the opposite.  I have a romantic attraction for them but I don’t want to date them.  Sapioromantic means that I am attracted to people for their intelligence.  Any one of these can be operating at a certain time depending on the person—or none of them!

Sometimes it feels as if I am Alice and have been dropped down the rabbit hole when it comes to talking to my particular child about matters of sexual identity, et al. Together, Colin and I have learned a lot.  It is our hope that we can help others learn and that the conversation keeps on going.

And Colin, I want to let you know that I am privileged to be your mom.

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Of Coming Out and Such…

Posted by: on: August 17, 2012

Colin, Mom

A couple of days ago, we drove across the 520 bridge and looked at the construction going on. They are building a new 520 bridge parallel to the old 520 bridge. It made me think of the way this floating bridge is constructed, section by section, and how that is a metaphor for Colin’s coming out. So I started talking to him about it! Our conversation touched on the following…

Colin, hasn’t your coming out process been like the 520 bridge being built? Before you could do away with your old life, you built a support system for your new life. That is kind of like the new bridge being built next to the old bridge.  Can you tell me what that was like for you?

Well… I guess it’s been hard in some parts, and easier in other parts? What answer do you want here, woman! 😛

It also occurs to me that as each section goes up, your coming out process has been like that. A step forward in understanding who you are one section at a time. In fact, you first came out as bisexual, yes? So the first section is that first coming out. Maybe something like:

1. Come out as bisexual in 9th grade
2. Decided to go to Camp Ten Trees in August of 2011 (between 9th and 10th grade)
3. Coming out as questioning in January 2011 when we filled out the application for camp
4. Deciding you wanted to live life as male at camp and be called Colin
5. Coming home and letting everyone know you were, in fact, male
6. Discovering you were pan-romantic
7. Figuring out you were asexual

Did I leave any sections out? Can you tell us what it was like for you to go through these steps? Oooh, I think a bridge section might be changing your Facebook gender and then I changed you from daughter to son. What do you think? Maybe more sections would be struggling with anxiety and stuff like that? What about starting therapy? Testosterone? Discovering AVEN? So many questions and such a continuous process of coming out!

I figured out I was trans in sixth grade when somebody called me a dyke and I had no idea what the hell that meant. I looked it up and found the term lgbt, and from there I looked up the meanings of the letters and found the term transgender. My response, as a sixth grader who hardly ever swore, was to go into the bathroom, look at myself in the mirror wearing my most fitted sports bra, a boys t-shirt, and basketball shorts, and said, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.” I then decided, nobody needs to know, and though I referred to myself as male, and called myself Kol – it didn’t turn into Colin until ninth grade – I just didn’t tell anybody.

Ninth grade is when life decided that it did matter. In ninth grade I met a girl who was bisexual, who liked me, and, since I was already aware I liked girls, but had never had a reason to come out since it hadn’t applied before that point. So, I agreed to be in a relationship with this girl. I actually came out for the specific purpose of making it so we could have an out relationship, though only to a specific group of friends and my mom and dad. Three days after I came out – and two and a half weeks into our relationship – she broke up with me. On Facebook. Publicly, on Facebook. So much for just a few friends knowing. Everybody knew, even people I hardly talked to knew because her new boyfriend she had broken up with me for had posted about it on his Facebook as well. My entire school knew. I made new enemies, as well as new friends who were like, “Oh my g’d, she’s out as bi! That’s amazing!” Safe to say, I was not out as trans at this point. The up side of this was the girl I had been crushing on since the beginning of eighth grade talked to me the Monday after the Facebook fiasco and, blushing bright red, told me she had a crush on me and that she was not sure if with the end of my last relationship so soon I would want to do anything if I returned her feelings, but maybe possibly? And I was like, yes! We ended up together for eight months.

That Thursday, at choir, I told one of my friends that I was bisexual and she looked at me and said, “So you want to have sex with girls?” And I was like, “No.”

“So then you’re not bi.”

“But I like girls. I know I like them.”

“But you don’t want to have sex with girls so you’re not bisexual. Bisexual means you want to have sex with boys and girls. So you’re not bisexual because you don’t want to have sex with girls.”

“… I don’t want to have sex with guys either.”

She just kind of looked at me as if I needed to be put in a loony bin. The conversation ended and never got continued. At the time, I just assumed a sex drive would come later. I didn’t think much of it, just thought it was fucking weird that suddenly all of my friends were like, sex. Hormones. Oh my g’d. Yes.

I’m not going to talk about the relationship with my girlfriend much, but she was not out as pansexual, which is how she told me she identified, and I immediately took that up as my identity when she explained what it meant to me. The course of our eight month long relationship was her coming out to her friends, and consequently telling them about me and her.

In January of our relationship I told her I was trans. We were texting before school, and the conversation went somewhat as follows.

Me: Do you ever feel like you’re not in the right body?

Her: As in do I wish I was a guy? No…

Me: Oh.

Her: Are you telling me that you think you’re trans?

Me: If you’re still alright with us being together, I would really like it if between us you could call me Kol and male…

Her: Of course I’m still going to be with you! That’s what pansexual means, silly. Kol, I love you.

It was at the end of the week I came out to my best friend for forever. It was also around this time I found out about Camp Ten Trees, a camp for LGBTQ teens and allies. I managed to convince my parents to let me go sometime in March. It was one of the best decisions of my life.

In February me and my mom were talking in the car, and I got on a rant about how I didn’t want my girly shit and I was so annoyed with the concept that I had to have long hair and want to show my boobs off and –

“Do you want me to enroll you in Gender Therapy?”

… HOLY FUCKING SHIT. As a transman that wasn’t out yet I was just like, oh my g’d, she knows, fuck, fuck, fuck! I managed to talk her out of the concept, but it terrified me that she knew – how the hell did she know?

In March, after my parents had agreed to let me go to camp but I had still yet to tell them I was trans or fill out the paperwork, I was doing laundry, and as I was folding it, made a pile of all the clothes I no longer wanted. This pile consisted of all of my dresses, skirts, frilly clothes, feminine cut pants and shirts, and anything really remotely feminine. This wasn’t that weird, I didn’t wear any of it that much, so it didn’t really matter. What then happened was my mom decided she could go through my stuff and take what she wanted. It was like, the girly shit was going to haunt me and I didn’t want it to, and so I started to argue with my mom about it and, somewhere through out the argument and me utterly flipping my shit I yelled at her, “Because I’m trans!” That is a really good way to silence a conversation. I pretty much immediately took it back as much as I could, and said something along the lines of I’m genderqueer and I identify as mostly male but still kind of female and blah, blah, blah, and, can I go to camp as Colin – which I think I found that name like three days previous. We filled out the paperwork, and that was pretty much it. See! You can’t fool your mom for long! But you know it was about economics for me. There were clothes I could wear since we were about the same size. Plus you steal my tops all the time. Even now.

At camp I didn’t have to pretend anymore. I was just Colin, I used male pronouns, I was male, and nobody messed it up, and when they did it they apologized, and never got it wrong again. When I got back and my mom asked me what I wanted to do, it hit me really, fucking, hard.

I couldn’t pretend anymore. I physically or mentally could not pretend anymore.

So that day, August 20th 2011, I came out to everybody. I talked to my school district, I made two posts on my Facebook page – one with a picture – and changed my name and gender, talked to the pastor of my mom’s church, and talked to the youth group leader of that church. A bully who tormented me all of eighth and ninth grade just unfriended me and started avoiding me. I was now too weird – or something – for her to bully. I lost some friends. I had an amazing support structure, but I wanted to start over.

So I switched school districts to the Seattle Public Schools district, and enrolled in NOVA – the next best decision in my life.

A month or two into school I found a fanfiction that broke my brain. It was of a pairing I liked, with one explaining to his partner that he didn’t experience sexual attraction, and that he really, really loved him, but when they were having sex it just… didn’t do anything for him and he just kind of felt… empty. In the tags it said ‘asexual’ and I was like… this involves a thorough investigation. What did I do? In that fandom I started reading fanfics that had an asexual character in the relationship. Via one of these fanfics I found out about AVEN and stalked it, but didn’t make an account until just recently because at the time I didn’t want anybody to know. In November I told my best friend squish that I met at NOVA that I was asexual, and then we had a conversation about love that I wrote a paper about and used for an assignment in one of my classes. I came out in my school’s queer group. When over winter break I asked out a girl from school who I then dated for five months, I told her I was asexual and how it would affect our relationship. She said she liked me a lot, and she didn’t care. I started to broach the subject with my mom during the month of December with tons of failure because she kept on cutting me off and not letting me explain. So I sent her this private facebook message.

Hey mom. Because you are impossible to talk to this about in person (in which I will explain why later in this text) I am sending you a message on Facebook. Alright. I’m asexual. Asexual literally means not sexual. And as such, I am not attracted to the idea of sex, other people having sex, me having sex (G’D NO. NEVER.), reading/watching sex, or anything sex related such as wanting to date somebody for more than just their mind, emotions, and actions. The reason this is impossible to talk to you about is because the FIVE TIMES I have attempted to talk to you about this, once I say something along the lines of “I don’t want to do anything with anyone,” you quickly follow it up with something along the lines of, “But there will be somebody.” And I have no response to that. Because there WILL NEVER be somebody in that respect. I am panromantic, which means I am romantically attracted to people, so yes, there will be relationships, and who knows? Possibly somebody I marry or have as a life partner. But every time I address asexuality with you there is a lack of understanding that leaves me feeling awkward and unsure how to proceed. Alright. There. So, if you’d like to continue this conversation, I’d prefer it to be in person. But I’ve gotten the wheel turning, I guess. Cool. So yeah, I’m asexual. Impossible to talk to? Only when you don’t say what you’re talking about! 😉 You never said, “I am…” You’d be like, “What if I have a friend who…” I understand that was your way of softly getting into the topic. HOWEVER, dear, I’d like to say an asexual teenager is every parent’s dream child. Don’t you think? No worries about teen pregnancies, STDs, etc. Only kidding a little. As straight forward as you can be sometimes, there are others when you talk around the topic for days. And as we established, when you do that, you tend to lose me since I can take only so many words before my brain starts farting.

I think the rest of my family just eventually found out when I talked about it random times later in the school year.

Around April I came out as polyamorous, because I don’t define love between two people. I often have multiple crushes at a time, so why can’t I have multiple loves and or relationships at a time? It made sense, and, with consent from all involved party’s and people explaining what they honestly feel, it works.

It’s what got me really thinking about my two major as of now past relationships. Both were remarkably squishy. I discussed it with my ex that I’m on really good terms with and we agreed that our five month long relationship was really squishy. And I’ve been thinking about it a lot. A lot, a lot. I wrote a fanfic with a character that feels this way, and I wrote it before I even had the words to use because nobody understood. And after attempting to have this conversation with four different people on AVEN at a variety of times since I finally made my account on June 12, and finally, my fifth attempt with an AVEN squish friend that I became facebook friends with had the conversation with me and I figured a shit ton out. Or more so, figured out the words behind what I feel.

A squish is a platonic crush.

The key word being, action.

Heh, heh. Talk about still coming out, will you. I haven’t actually told this to my mom yet, though, we did get in a huge discussion about a word that I’m about to use earlier today.

I identify as three types of romantic. Panromantic because I find people attractive not based on gender or lack there of, but on personality. Lithromantic because I am attracted to people, whether it be because they are aesthetically or mentally pleasing, but don’t wish to pursue a relationship with romantic action with them. And platonicromantic because I want somebody I like as a friend, that I’m platonic with, to be in a relationship with romantic action but not romantic feelings or attraction.

Because two of these are new words for people out there, and my mother, I am going to explain.

Lithromantic means you feel attraction but not a desire, need, or want to have a romantic relationship, returned feelings, or romance with.

Platonicromantic means you want somebody you’re just friends with to do romantic things with you such as dates, cuddling, kissing perhaps, and other romantic things with, but isn’t romantic.

So like I said, action is the key word.

So… um… this is actually kind of terrifying. Coming out. In a blog post. Well. Mom? What say you? Answer it by answering this:

How is the bridge today? The bridge is strong and stable while the new bridge is being built, dear.

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Of The Mind and Such…

Posted by: on: July 31, 2012

Colin & Mom

Alright! It’s been a while since we posted anything – which is mostly my fault, ger – but here’s an update!

And what about, other than mentality. Everybody has their up days, and everybody has their down days. People get anxious from random shit, depressed from important things, or just blah from not getting enough sun – or vitamin D!

Basically, mental disorders are a thing that vary for every person that has them. I have a friend whose body chemical make up gives her clinical depression, though she doesn’t feel depressed. So when she got put on meds, it helped immediately. It was like she wasn’t fighting with the part of her brain that was saying be inactive anymore when she wanted to do things.

But there are people who become depressed from other things whether it be anxiety, lack of friends, traumatic past, lack of sun, physical illnesses such as cancer, broken bones, or hypothyroidism. Often, people are depressed along with their body’s depressed state, so even medication doesn’t really do much for them for a while, because they are still mentally in that rut even if they’re body no longer is. (Hence therapy is a thing.)

I was in a mental hospital earlier this year because I have a “mood disorder” – number 365 or something like that – which causes general anxiety and episodic anxiety bursts, and I also have PTSD. Basically I was having huge anxiety driven panic attacks which would wear me down and make me tired, but because of insomnia being a horrible things, I couldn’t sleep. Pretty much everything was a trigger. I was always anxious. It made me physically sick. Nothing fit. I went several weeks with having at least two of these debilitating panic attacks a day where I couldn’t control what I did or what I thought, and during which I legitimately thought  I was going to die. I finally turned to my mom for help because I couldn’t do it any longer. I didn’t feel like I could go to school, face my friends, get out of bed, face the world. We put me in mental hospital for a week. I didn’t even get put on meds. But for me, being taken out of the situation that was making me super anxious helped me more than anything else could’ve.

My anxiety stems from my PTSD from bullying I went through at my old schools, and something minutely along the lines of OCD. When I get super anxious, it is OCD through and through. Side effects being, the fact that I don’t sleep well as it is changed to practically never being able to sleep, messes freaked me out, but were too big for me to deal with, and made me more anxious, debilitating panic attacks, hearing voices and sounds as if they were really there that I could interact with even though there was nobody and nothing physically there, and the standards in my head running rampant. It was not a good time in my life.

The standards are the more mental part of the OCD-ish part of my anxiety. Basically, in my head I make standards based off the norms of our society, and I try to meet them. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or anything, but I’m not really the norm of society. Really?  Meeting these standards was hard, because I just couldn’t. Even in the queer community, I’m not the norm – if there even is one? My brain said there was. And me being trans, ace, (asexual for the masses) and panromantic did not fit that norm that I’m not even quite sure what it is. The voices in my head didn’t help. They made fun of me for not being able to make the standards.

But for g’d knows why, they were obnoxiously supportive of my being trans.

Physically, I just had to be even, and during the worst part of my anxiety, everything else had to be too.

Now a days, I take vitamin D because I’m severely low – or was – which my doctor says probably made the anxiety worse. I’ve also noticed, if I go a couple days – between five to seven – without taking it, I start feeling not depressed or blah per se, but like I don’t have the physical energy to do what I want to do and think about what I want to think about. I also start getting kind of anxious. So I take my vitamin D, because I don’t like being anxious.

That’s how my anxiety panned out, but in the mental hospital, there was another person there with the same diagnosis as me, but an entirely different way of it being for him.

Bipolarness is another good example of that. On the interwebs I found a person talking about her bipolarness. For her, it’s that one day she could be presented with a problem and go at it for hours until she figured it out. And then the next day she could be presented with the same problem and go at it for a while before becoming fed up with it. The next day she could look at it and say it’s impossible and go do something else. The next day, she could look at it and burst into tears and have a manic fit about it. Here’s her actual post if you’re wondering.

http://brainbent.tumblr.com/post/17279828752/tengwarsenna-one-day-i-can-see-something-sad

One of my fairly close friends also has bipolar disorder. Basically, it starts at a high with her being very happy, and in a few days time, works it way down being severely depressed, she freaks out, and the loop starts over after a few days of feeling blah.

The two are similar but still different.

I guess this is a lot about how I’ve met people that try to shove everybody that has one thing into one box, when mental disorders are like people. It’s never the same, even if they have the same name.

So, here you go! Hope this was helpful in some way or another! I’ve been kind of into researching this type of stuff lately, so I guess that I could make another post at some later point about other mental disorders, the fact that I dislike that term, and other various things in this subject. I don’t know. What do you want?

The bridge, by the way, has been slow. Traffic from the new construction I suppose. Maybe that’s why we’ve been not updating. 😛 Colin, you’re perfect, you know that?!

See ya!

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Posted by: on: July 6, 2012

This is just fabulous!

Of Pronouns and Such

Posted by: on: June 1, 2012

Terri (mom) and Colin

Pronouns have taken on greater importance since your coming out, right?  And I know that we have discussed it ad nauseum.  It isn’t as easy as most people would think, though, is it?  There are the traditional gender pronouns, he/she, him/her.  Now there are new gender pronouns, ze, zim, zer.  These are all concepts that I understand.  It took me a while to accept that they/them could be a chosen pronoun for a single person.  Really seems like multiple personality disorder when a person refers to zimself (Themself!) as a they or them.  But, you have persuaded me.  I still won’t use it in an academic setting.  🙂

However, what we discuss back and forth and round and round is other chosen pronouns.  You have told me that whatever someone identifies with, they can use as a pronoun.  If they identify as a tree, they can use tree as their pronoun.  Now, darn it!  This is just confusing.  Will you please tell me why that is okay?  Why isn’t it confusing?  Isn’t it confusing to you?  Do you know someone with such a gender expression?  If anything can be a pronoun, how can we navigate language?

I don’t actually see it as that difficult. Maybe that’s just the way my mind is wired. Maybe not. I’d probably say yes to the way my mind is wired. At my school, when PGP’s are explained to new students you see  a few reactions typically. There are the few that know what you’re talking about, and either help explain or roll there eyes and wait for you to be done because they already get it and can we move on now? There are those who just light up and sometimes ask, “Wait, so I can use anything as my gender pronoun? Wow – that’s so cool!” It just makes sense, no questions asked. There are also those who after ten minutes of explanation still give you the what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about look and say, “Wait, so why is my PGP he and him? I don’t get it.” Of course, there are other reactions, but those are some of the typical. It’s always just made sense to me. I don’t know why, it just does.

By the way. PGP stands for Prefered Gender Pronouns, and is the words you use to call yourself or have others call you that describes your Gender Identity. My Gender Identity is male. Typically male identified people have the PGP he, him, and his. I personally describe my Gender Identity (male) with the PGP he, him, and zy.

I have a friend whom’s Gender Identity is Tree. This individual uses different types of trees to describe their gender based on how they feel about treeness today.

An individual I have not met, but have heard about – they used to attend my school – has the Gender Identity Rainbow. This persons PGP is the colours of the Rainbow, and changes day to day.

What are your recommendations when using pronouns?  What should people never, ever say?

Recommendations are just try to remember. If you are in a fight with somebody never purposely misgender them. That is asking to not ever have that friendship again. Mistakes are forgivable. Just try. I will say. Unless a person specifically tells you they identify as it, never, EVER, call somebody an it.

What is the hardest thing for you, regarding pronouns?  I suspect it is the mistakes a few people constantly make, repeatedly.  What is your greatest joy?

It’s really frustrating when the same person messes up constantly. If one  specific person can never get you pronouns right, even if they apologize  when they do, it’s so frustrating. It makes me personally feel a bit underappreciated and disprespected. It’s well appreciated and enjoyed when people  just, get, pronouns.

How can we help you?  And what can you do to help us?

Um… listen? And I guess if you’re listening, I’ll talk. 😀 I like talking. 😛

I know that this “tree” discussion causes some heated arguments because I have a hard time accepting a person using tree as a pronoun.  It makes me think they are a bit loopy.  I’m sorry.  I can’t help my reaction, but I’ll try and listen and hold your point of view. 

All’s well that end’s well.

The weather on the bridge today was stormy and blah.  And our conversation was too.

That’s because broska was in the car. 😀 Good day sir!

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Of RiTuAlS and Such. :D -arrow to the left- That was fun!

Posted by: on: May 31, 2012

Colin, Terri (mom) 

Alright. So. Ritual. What is ritual? When you hear that word what does it make you think of?

For me, it has many meanings, definitions, and memories – good and bad – behind it. One of the better:

Peace,

Love,

Joy.

For as long as I can remember, whenever I left for anywhere, a friend’s house, school, camp, anywhere, my mom and I would do say, peace, love, joy. Hand motions and all. (Hey mom? Can we put in a picture here?)

Why yes, we can!

Joy is not as simple as peace & love because it is a motion.  You can find a video of the motion here.

It’s a goodbye ritual, wishing you a good day, or week, or time away from home.

Ritual for me specifically, apart from my family, also goes alone with my life. I’m Wiccan, and I do rituals for esbats and sabats. Also done if I have a friend in need – never cast a spell on somebody without their permission, by the way – or for a various amount of reasons. Ritual in Wicca, is a spiritual thing, and when done with another person – I have two people I do rituals with occasionally – shows great trust and/or care for them.

Mom? Any rituals specific for you not involving me/the family?

Well, Christianity is full of rituals!  Communion, baptism, even just the events of an every day Sunday.  The ritual of coming together and praying.  My favorite ritual?  The passing of the peace and the genuine loving kindness of the hugs.

Communities always have ritual.  It helps them define themselves.  If we didn’t have ritual, we’d probably be inventing every day newly.  There is some merit in approaching each day in a new way, but how many different ways can you wake up?  The best ritual is my first cup of coffee in the morning!  The loving kindness of your dad bringing me that first cup for several reasons.  He is doing it out of love, I love the smell of coffee and the feel of a warm cup in my hands, and I need to take my medicine ASAP!  So it is reaching emotional, spiritual, and physical health!

But not all experiences of ritual is good.  Do you want to share a problematic experience?

So I used to be a part of an organization called the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls. If it’s not obvious by that name, I was not out as trans yet. So, I’m not exactly feminine. I don’t like dresses or skirts, or skinny jeans, or bows, or bluh, stereotypical female clothing. In Rainbow Girls (the abbreviation, because, g’d, who wants to say International Order of the Rainbow for Girls every time) when we did rituals from our book titled “Ritual” we had to wear floor length white dresses. Hm. So. We’re memorizing page long texts – if not longer – in old English, in several hour long  rituals, while I’m in a dress. There’s also people that I wasn’t entirely fond of, or weren’t fond of me, the hierarchy of Rainbow Girls, the late hours, and weird rules that have never made sense to me. Suffice to say, Rainbow Girls was not a good experience of ritual for me. I will also say, there are most definitely people who loved Rainbows Girls and it was an amazing experience for them. For me, not so much.

I think our greatest ritual right now is crossing the bridge together.  Don’t you? 

Your face is a good ritual. 😛 Yah, yah, fine, whatever. It’s a good ritual. I guess, technically this thing a thing is a good ritual too.

The weather on the bridge today was cloudy.  And some of our memories were too.

 POKE YOUR FACE!!!!!! 😀

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Of Sexuality and Such

Posted by: on: May 25, 2012

Terri & Colin

So, there was this brain study about men and women.  It is reported on CNN.  It says men’s brains and women’s brains are different.  And that men obsess over women’s breasts, etc., etc.  Every stereotypical thing we’ve heard over the years was repeated.  A few points:

  • Male and female brains mostly alike, but some profound differences exist
  • Men’s sexual pursuit area 2.5 times larger than the one in the female brain, she writes
  • She says testosterone drives the “Man Trance”– or a glazed-eye stare at breasts
  • A wife’s pheromones cause “Daddy Brain.” Later, “Lovable Grandpa” or “Grumpy Old Man”?

So, Colin, since you just started ‘T’*, do you find yourself falling into glazed-eye stares?  *’T’ is Testosterone.  This is what Colin calls it.

I think this study is ridiculous.  What kind of controls did they have around gender?  Did they only have heteronormative, gorilla men and heteronormative women?  Seriously.  Is a gay man’s eyes going to go into a glazed-eye stare over breasts?  Ha ha ha!!  And you, dear Colin, don’t glaze over at anything!  There are three things at play, right?  You can explain better than I.  Sexuality, Gender Identity, and Romantic Attraction.  Will you explain what these three things are and where you fall on the spectrum?  And do you think it will change while you transition with Testosterone treatments?

I’d actually say there are four subjects at play. The three aforementioned, and a fourth, being Expression. Sexuality is how you identify whom you’re sexually attracted to. A man might want to have sex with a woman, a woman might want to have sex with another woman, a genderqueer person might only want to have sex with other genderqueer people. It can be anything. Hell, sapiosexual even means you’re only sexually attracted to people who are really smart. Gender Identity is how you identify your gender. Commonly looked at on a spectrum as “this end is girly girl” and “this end is manly man.” You can fall anywhere on that small itsy bitsy spectrum. Uh… no. I like to look at the spectrum as more of a circle floating in space. So you can be female or male, androgynous, both genders, neither genders, all genders, a seperate gender. You can be floating-out-in-the-middle-of-space gendered. Anything you can use to describe your own gender is your Gender Identity. Romantic Attraction is whom you are romantically attracted to. Somebody you’d want to date, but don’t necessarily want to have sex with. And Expression. Often confused with Gender Identity. Your Expression could be femme, butch, masculine, I personally have a friend who says they express as happy. Somebody could be female gendered, and identify as butch, that doesn’t make them male if they don’t identify that way just as a male can be femme and would not be female unless they identified as such.

I, putting all the terms I identify under together, am asexual (very very VERY asexual), male with androgynous roots (I’ll explain that in a minute), panromantic, and butch.

I am asexual. Very asexual. Asexual to the point that sex to me is like, O.o-what-is-that-weird-thing-um-you-go-do-that-in-a-corner-while-I-eat-my-pizza. I am so asexual, that I… ah, just no. I’m pretty sure I get more “turned on” by the idea of eating pizza.

So basically, male, with the pronouns that come with it being he, him, and his. When I say androgynous roots, it’s because in my childhood, I honestly didn’t know what gender was. I grew up just being a kid. I didn’t have a gender, and I didn’t gender other people. That’s totally affected my gender today, and as such I include it with my gender identity. I use the gender pronouns, he, him, and zy.

My romantic attraction is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I say I’m panromantic because I see beauty in everyone and get along with everyone. And sure, I’ve dated people, but my relationships seem to be more just a heightened friendship. Like a bestfriend. The close of my last relationship ended with her pretty much saying I’m one of her best friends. And she is one of mine. One of my best friends was talking to me today and said that me and my now exgirlfriend even in our relationship just seemed like really close friends. And I agree. I don’t know. This is honestly the hardest of these for me to answer.

Expression is fairly simple, but seems to be mis-seen a lot. I identify as butch because I feel more masculine than not in a not related to gender way. I like being the knight in shining armor. I like wearing basketball shorts and T-shirts and blue jeans. I’m not really fond of makeup, I’ll wear occasionally, and when I do, it’s theatrical craziness. Something I can goof off and have fun with. I like to hike and climb trees and be dirty. I love flannel. So much. And this is why I identify as butch. These, I suppose could be the same reason somebody identifies as femme. It all depends on the specific individual.

That is a lot of information!  Thank you for sharing so much and being so honest.

The weather on the bridge today was nice and sunny.  And our conversation was too!

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Of Socrates and Such

Posted by: on: May 16, 2012

Colin, Socrates, Terri

But… I want to go that way!!! No!!!

Now Socrates, we’re taking 520. We have to, otherwise –

NO!!! We must take the other bridge! I don’t want to die in our plummet to the water by trying to drive on a nonexistent bridge!

Wow, you are such a stupid GPS. I mean, g’d! The freaking bridge exists! And it takes anywhere from ten minutes to thirty minutes less. Why don’t you just believe us, it is real. You won’t die!

But… but… I like the other bridge. It’s more stable.

Shoosh your face, Socrates. This bridge is better.

It’s a toll bridge!

And that matters?

Well… well of course! How could it not matter?

‘Cause our family /pays/ for the toll.

Take the exit right.

No. We’re taking the 520 bridge.

No. Take the exit right.

No.

Yes.

No.

Yes

Yes.

No. Wait, darn it!.

Now shoosh your face, Socrates, we’re taking the 520 bridge. We have to, otherwise this blog wouldn’t exist.

And so it goes, our daily adventure with Socrates, the GPS. Convincing him that the 520 bridge is not under construction any longer and that if we cross the bridge, it will be okay.

The weather is still sunny, and we are, perhaps, a little silly.

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