every inch a king

being home isn’t bad at all

but the constant misgendering is really starting to get me down.

and i really don’t think it’s a good time to come out.

(hah, when is a good time to tell your parents that you’re not their daughter?)

buhhhhhhh

stupid

so i’m doing that awesome thing called “applying for internships”

i’m not having such great luck — feminist internships are greatly concentrated in LA and DC, and the ones that are in NY are mostly looking for legal interns.

i’ve applied to BUST magazine, and i’m about to apply for a position with a queer film festival (MIX NYC) and a queer news website (Out Impact).

my first application was sent to Dixon Place, which is an experimental off-off-broadway theater specializing in LGBTQ* artists and artists of color. that’s my number one choice, and i am AGONIZING over waiting to hear from them.

i found another one that i find really interesting, but i’m having a dilemma…

it’s for an organization called WET, which specializes in promoting women-centered and women-produced film/media/art. right up my alley, i say to myself. but their internship program (and i think the whole organization) is specifically for “women.” this is what their internship description says:

WET mentors young women interested in working in the arts and production, through a comprehensive internship program, which provides women in the beginning of their careers skills in script coverage, public speaking, leadership, grant writing, and sponsorship proposals. These internships often culminate with WET suggesting and securing paid positions for the intern in the entertainment industry.

okay so a good portion of me looks at this and says, don’t do it, that’s not you, they’re looking for young women and you’re not one of those. it makes me feel like i’m starting to have some male privilege, and that i need to start checking that. i can’t be one of those guys that says, “well i used to be a woman so i get to call myself a part of the oppressed group and then ride on those coat tails the rest of my life.”

but another part of me says that i should just go for it, because, first of all, i’m still perceived as a “young woman” by 90% of the people i meet. secondly, i care a whole hell of a lot about these issues, and i feel disconcerted that they would close this opportunity off from young men who might be just as passionate about it.

and part of me still feels like i’m not totally the oppressor (not to say that all men are, but you get what i mean). i wasn’t socialized as male, i haven’t grown up with those privileges, and since i don’t pass, since i’m not out to everyone i know, i still retain some of my female oppression. or am i just blowing smoke out of my ass? and let’s say that i ask if they’d accept a trans male intern, and they say yes, am i undermining my own identity by relegating myself to a status that is somewhere inbetween? where i get to, eventually, reap the benefits of white male privilege but, in the mean time, i get to glide by on the opportunities given to me as if i am female? will i get to that point where i am read as male, identify as FTM, and i look at cis men and blow them a raspberry and say “at least i don’t have those nasty privileges you grew up with” as if it was their fault? if i do, please, someone, punch me.

where does “ambitious” stop and “asshole” begin?

p.s.
i got new sunglasses today:
 

elfstaranymore:

Write your chosen name.

Write it big, small, in rainbow letters, in trans or genderqueer or pansexual or ace flag colors.

Write it in all caps and no caps, elegant cursive and big scrawling kindergarten letters.

Write it in whatever kind of letters you weren’t supposed to write in as a kid, maybe big girly bubble letters or bloody horror-movie ones. Write it in the margins, with a Sharpie that bleeds through, or in bright yellow crayon. Buy snacks and put your name all over them. Write it inside the covers of all your books.

If it makes you feel good, take some time and grow up with your name the way you never got to. Write it with your non-dominant hand so you can feel the same determined struggle you felt learning to write your birth name. Make a sign to put over your bed. Type your name up in Word and add drop shadows and horrible color gradients and then waste ink printing it out. Spell it out in macaroni and spray-paint it gold, dig it in the sand at the beach with a stick, try to pee it in the snow. Play Zelda and name Link after you, play Pokemon and name the hero after you, play Oregon Trail and be the wagon leader. Practice your autograph for when you grow up and become a rock star. If your name is common enough, get dorky personalized things at souvenir shops.

People who love their names as children get to revel in putting them on everything, but so many trans* people didn’t have that joy. This is one small way to get it back. I personally only have uncomfortable memories attached to seeing my birth name written on things, but every time I see my new name it heals a little of that hurt.

And if you don’t know your name yet? This could be a really fun way to “date” some different names until you find one you want to be your life partner.

When I came out to my friends, I told them that I didn’t want to change my name because I wasn’t changing my identity, I was changing the way people perceived the identity that was always there. And “Jess” has always been special to me — I went from Kindergarten to 12th grade without sharing a classroom, locker room, or hallway with another “Jess.” I didn’t see my trans* self emerging as someone else — just the real Jess that has always been here, with me.

But, there’s something really alluring about changing to a more masculine-aligned name. When I was first exploring my gender, back in late middle school / early high school, I played around with different names, seeing how they felt. My mother always said I would have been named Daniel had I been MAAB (male assigned at birth), so I was always partial to that name. I also like Johnathan — I’ve always wanted “Johnny” as a nickname, and that would enable my initials to remain intact, except for my middle name. I always figured that I would change my middle name to my father’s name, since my current middle name is my mother’s name.

I’ve practiced signing my name as the various names I’ve contemplated adopting. And, I won’t lie, it feels really cool to sign a name that I’ve chosen myself — one that isn’t connected to the life that I have lived with a forced female identity.

And yet, abandoning “Jess” seems like an act of throwing away the 20 years I’ve spent with that moniker. And as much as my gender identity has been a struggle and a point of contention, I’ve had a pretty good 20 years so far. I don’t want to ignore the time I spent as Jess: a daughter, a lesbian, an aunt, a sister, even though those words don’t apply and never truly applied… I still don’t know if I’m ready to say, “That was who I was, this is who I am.”

Is it possible to change your name and not throw away who you used to be? I know it is. But I can’t figure out how to do it.

Not to mention that it’s hard enough for me to tell people that I’ve changed my pronouns. I can’t imagine what it would be like to tell people that I’ve changed my name. And that’s harder to hide from parents — pronouns can be chalked up to a slip of the tongue, but calling me “Dan” instead of “Jess” is a little to far to stretch.

I guess it’s not a decision that I have to make right now. And this is probably not the best time to make it, anyway, considering my out of the closet status, and how much goddamn money it takes to legally change your name, plus what a hassle it will probably be.

I dunno. I’m open to suggestions, comments, psychoanalysis. 

(via bubonickitten)

I
think,
That “passing” is the most offensive word I know right now
It’s like asking
For permission to be an impostor
In a world that hates your body
And disregards how you were raised
The praise
I recieve from my friends 
When a stranger uses masculine terms with me
Sometimes it makes me sick
And i realize that validation is the right of every living creature
I just wonder why I have to pass to get it

The only reason why I’m trans
Is because of society refusing to validate the entire person that I am
So I guess the best option is to try and line up with a man
Trans-Gender
Trans-Body
Trans-Human
In-Human

For you to look at my frame
And make judgments on my mind
You see, my dick is removable
But my brain is with me all the time
And I know there are advantages to having this convenient body hair
But try and walk into a truck stop in the middle of nowhere
And wonder if you’re being sized up because you’re black, or cuz you’re queer
If you think even for a second that every time I pass
Makes it easier for me to walk into that bathroom and drop my pants you’re got another thing coming
Because today it only means that you see me as
something that maybe yesterday I wasn’t

So what’s the 
price of passing?
Racial profiling, stereotypes, and let’s not mention the harassing
Admission into the boy’s club just to hear female bodies
talked about like dogs
Passing by itself doesn’t change the size of my clit, so who are you calling a pussy?
Queer women asking me why I think I’m too good to be butch
The target on my back, the judgment hanging over my head
Filling my body with regret, while I lay in my bed
Feeling shame for not knowing what to do with my male privilege
Just try and think with me, about how scared I was
When I realized how aware I was
That I am now a representative of the largest population of domestically abusive partners
I never imagined the ways that my mind would be twisted
The pressure of trying to be a “good black man”

And I’m not trying to spend so much time
on race
But take a look at my face
And see a man who used to pray
For God to erase the scars of centuries
that came to live on my skin
And no, this isn’t one of those poems about how
“I hate my black ass”
Because the truth is, I love my black ass
That’s why I’m so afraid to pass
When I drive by a squad car when I’m going out on the weekends 
I’m just trying to get into the club
But people who look like me get hit with a club
And that’s just the way the world is
I think I’m starting to understand that “angry black man” aggression
That came into my possession
The day that I started to pass

I think
there’s nothing harder
than living as a man when you were
never raised to be one
I was never taught how to be my father’s son
Sometimes, I wonder how much different I would be
If just one of those weekends he had chosen to take me 
On one of those father-son fishing trips
But my gender’s the illegitimate child of social construction 
The bastard product of what happens
when you don’t know how to live but refuse to die
So you try to make some kind of sense out of what’s inside
And we hope and we pray and we need for the world to give a grade that says
“You Pass”

You
can open
the door to a cage,
but the bird still has to
leave it
Being seen as a man doesn’t make
living it easy
I know I’m a man but some days I just don’t feel like one
Passing doesn’t make me any more of who I am
As a matter of fact, I think it’s showing me who I’m not
Displacing pain with rage, taking out my frustrations on the 
first surface I can reach with my fist
Is the testosterone doing this?
Wearing clothes that don’t fir me, researching how to make my dick grow
Holdin my liquor like a man, try and put some hair on my chest
See
Taking my gender cues from music talking about bitches and hos
the truth is, I 
don’t know how to be a man
I wonder what would happen if the woman I was raised to be
Could hear some of the things that this man thinks
Would she be ashamed of me?

I think that inside this body is a little boy
No more grown than he was the day he stepped out of his mother’s womb
Into this global tomb
Where we learn just enough about living so we can die safe
And pass on to a better place

And I’m not trying to knock anyone who yearns for the freedom to pass
I’m just trying to say that for me, there’s a dark side to this class
And if my grade is dependent on forgetting the woman inside this man
Then the entire world can go F itself

- - -

thanks to J Ship for passing this on to me

emphasis mine

Not nearly as scary as coming out to friends via FB message, but still took a lot of courage to push the “Share” button.

Wasn’t gonna do anything like this, but I didn’t realize the problem with only coming out to a few people on FB means that you have to come out to everyone else face to face (sans the book) and ohmanidon’tdodis. And I thought people would catch on when they heard my friends using correct pronouns, but most haven’t, and I can’t really expect anyone to just catch on and jump on the bandwagon with something like this.

Thought about making an event, but didn’t want to make that big of a deal about it.

Also terrified that somehow my mother will find it, even though I made the privacy settings so that only I and the college network can see it. Still, that tricky Facebook…

Well, we’ll see how this goes. Hopefully well. I don’t really know where to go from here, though, if I continue to get misgendered, other than correcting people, which is what I know I should do but aioshfdnafohdsngfdhanfdsgmlds I am so bad at life.