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Dear Letters,
RE: In response to a conservative opinion printed in your paper. Daniel McCarthy worte of the current President: "[..] in seeing to the nation’s interests, he has been embarrassingly successful." Spoken like a well-to-do, yet myopic white man. I'm a nonbinary 61-year-old writer and life coach who cares about how my nonbinary and other vulnerable communities--such as POC, LGBT, immigrant, poor, and homeless--fare in this country. Until the last election, I felt that life in America was becoming increasingly safe for me. Come January 2017, not a day has passed on which I have not felt my sphere shrinking. Two years in, my community consists almost exclusively of other nonbinary folks. This is so because with the current President the cultural climate has shifted and American society is moving backwards toward restoring the old order of cisnormativity: Everyone tightly tethered to one of two gender poles--female and male--with no other options positioned in between--the absurd vision of a choir with only two voices. Daily, it seems, it is being made clear in one way or another that we, as nonbinary folks, as trans people, not only don't have a right to exists but actually do not exist. Where we see our authentic self-expression, the spirit and tone of this administration encourages the public to sees pathology. We are a vital part of this nation and this president is not seeing to our interests. In fact, he is often working against them: From trying to reinstate the transgender ban in the US military, rescinding guiding memos that protect the rights of trans students and workers, to HHS reportedly intending to establish a legal definition of sex that is tied to anatomy. Far from needing to, as McCarthy says "keep...focus on his personal affairs," the LGBTQIA and other vulnerable communities and their advocates have to keep our eagle eye on this President's support of policies that undermine the vulnerable. We need to keep our hands equipped with anything we can grab--ladles, cooking spoons, and whisks, if need be, to clang on pots and pans to keep raising the awareness needed for the support of those whose protections this administration, not only neglects but violates. We need to keep our keen eyes on each other to continue to bring us together under the umbrella of our humanity. We need to express our humanity with the fiercest love that rises from our heels up through our bodies and into our fingers and mouths to write and speak up for all vulnerable people.
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Francis, it could be so much better! Oh, I don’t disagree, but who are you to tell me!? And don’t call me Francis. You’re one interrobang away from being deleted. And it’s my place to say so and decide so. There is no housing crisis in my mind The troublemakers have been evicted And there’s plenty rooms for the beautiful people now-- artists, writers, creators and inventors, philosophers mystics and badasses who step into their power and by doing so, can help remake this world. Oh? I’m sorry, I thought you were calling me Francis Oh! You are Francis! I misunderstood You were just introducing yourself and here I thought you we trying to scrape on my identity. Never mind. Here, let me show you: is this a room you could like? It has a nice corner window I see now. The issue with punctuation You meant: “Francis. It could be so much better!” Set up shop. Help us make it so. Welcome Francis! ©2019 Henry India Holden Snow lays white in the sun. Its hard glitter signals
biting cold in juxtaposition to the hopeful colored sky. Under this blue dome lies an enigma—a house inured to the surrounding brightness. A house out of phase. It knows nothing of this cold spectacle. It is protected in a shroud like an English graveyard on a darkening hillside—half-lost in a gathering mist. Entombed there for some time, eventually, you choose to raise your arms and dig upward and out of your bereaving chamber. When morning finally comes, you cross the funerary grounds. You leave the iron gates wide open for you shall return here. But for now, the morning sun dispels the fog. Two things that I love, love more than life because they antecede my life-- and give my life to me-- can’t even be in the same room together. One is an inky, shimmering dark, the other, words constellating shimmering lies. And if not lies, then half-truths that, in falling short in describing the other thing I love, falsify it in the mind and sometimes erase it from the heart until-- like invisible ink that is so strong and clearly visible at first, yet inexorably fades away--this luminous signature of divine reality is, thankfully, retraced. Again and again. This is the nature of the divine experience. It has come to pass that I cannot live without either of these very beautiful things: words that fail to describe divine reality and divine reality that defies description, itself. Somehow the cognitive dissonance, between these two things that I love, uncomfortable like the voice of a singer singing always just slightly off-key that becomes part of their unique sound-- think Madonna—and that, if the pitch were corrected, would make that sound unrecognizable-- and therefore, maybe not as appealing-- this cognitive dissonance I am speaking of that is caused by the failure of words to peel the true form of reality from its cloak of shimmering darkness, becomes incorporated into the unique flavor of this divine reality that I love more than life because it antecedes my life and gives my life to me. It may be possible, therefore, to say that could words and the divine come together without causing any distortion in either, neither might remain as appealing as it is now. It is, perhaps, the struggle of words to define the indefinable that gives them their tragic, and also heroic, charisma. It may be that the very nature of the unsayableness of the divine--that cognitive dissonance between the experienced and the retold-- is what enacts its greatest allure. 1/9/19  A friend recently said that being trans doesn't exempt you from misogyny. That embracing masculinity also means embracing the hard work that comes with undoing the toxic elements as well. I absolutely agree and am so grateful to them for these simple, yet poignant words. They gave voice to a process my own behavior pushes me into: I identify as transmasculine and, though a staunch feminist, I, too, have to deal with toxic masculinity in myself! It's such a shocker!
When I first realized who I really am--genderqueer and transmasculine--and got into the experience of letting my masculine self out, I went through a phase of being explicitly uncommunicative, terse, uncompassionate, hard and closed off--all stereotypically male behaviors. To be honest, I especially enjoyed the freedom and simplicity of no longer having to explain myself. My poor partner. He was patient, as he always is, but it sucked for him, as he put it. He compassionately reminded me of all the work he had done to eliminate his own toxicity in our relationship LONG before I discovered that I'm nonbinary/transmasculine. Though I have taken his words to heart, I frequently bristle at having to do emotional labor to a degree I did not when I still thought of myself as a woman (however poorly performed). Perhaps, because as an empath I did so much heavy lifting for 40 years, a part of me is just sick and tired of it. Thankfully, in my relationship with my partner, we share the labor. And when I feel like it should be OK for me to be a dick or, absurdly, that it isn't fair that I don't get to be the dick for a change after decades of being on the receiving end of toxic masculinity, I remember how much I appreciate that he did the hard work of replacing his own toxic behavior, what little there was of it. It's confusing and challenging to navigate transmasculinity but not imitate the toxic behavior of many cis men. As my transmasculinity comes more into the foreground, I sometimes unconsciously behave in toxic ways by being less compassionate, tender, kind, and comforting than I used to be. And yet, a spiritual love for all that is living is more defining of me than my gender journey. These days, masculinity, as expressed in our culture, and my deeply seated spiritual imperative to be an agent of healing vie with each other for primacy. The latter takes the win 99% of the time, but these wins are not without cost. A cost that has to do with understanding who I am. A cost that I have yet to fathom. From considering becoming a transman to declaring myself genderqueer to becoming an activist for gender diversity, it's a journey. Lately, I've wanted a name to express my gender journey. The kingly Henry has caught my attention. I posted it on Facebook. The responses inspired me to write a poem.
-- Hello Henry Today, I posted a new name. "Hello Henry," was the first response. So good to be known, dear friend. “Whatever brings you joy my friend,” was the second. You missed the point, my friend. This isn’t a pleasure trip this isn't a haircut. This is my identity my authenticity. This is about saying out loud who I am Someone wrote, "What’s in a name?" With mine, I'm sending up a flare. I'm building a fire in the shape of a prayer Even though we’re slow, we’re learning. Someday, it’ll feel like we always knew and understood that gender isn't definable as a pair of opposites. Someday we won’t think twice before we ask, "What's your pronoun?" Someday auto-spell check will know I dictated, “Ask my pronoun,” not, “Ask my problem.” Dear Cis People,
As a cis person, you may have heard the term, but you may not be sure what it means. So, let’s start there. Cis is short for cisgender. It relates, per one dictionary, to a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to the common* interpretation of their biological sex. So, if you have a vagina and think of yourself as a woman, you’re cis. If you have a penis and think of yourself as a man, you’re cis. If you have a vagina and don’t feel very strongly about identifying as a woman, you may be on the nonbinary palette. I use the term palette instead of spectrum—the word frequently used to describe gender diversity—because it further illuminates the non-binary ("binary" means "involving two things," for example-female and male, or binary systems-a system with two suns.). Because, you see, there’s not a neat little slider you can move left or right until you settle on exactly where your gender is positioned right in between two other perfectly definable gradations. Palette of colors can be a useful concept because a palette contains the ingredients that can create infinite variety: A little bit of blue with red and black mixes to a beautiful shade of plum for one person, a dab of vermilion with yellow and white become luminous apricot for someone else. Whether apricot or plum, or another color, what all gender-nonconforming people have in common is that they don’t identify as standardized, unchanging, and uniform colors like, say--and we do say--pink for the female gender and blue for the male gender. Even if you would, upon consideration, not think of yourself as solidly pink or blue, chances are you haven’t given much thought to whether your gender is female or something else. Why would you? Vagina equals woman; penis, man. It’s self-evident. Well, it only needs no further proof if everyone shares the lived experience of that truth. Not everyone does. Some human beings don’t feel like women or like men. To them, the gender roles, as set forth by society, are restrictive and painful. To us—as I am part of that wide-ranging palette—these roles feel, at best, like a bad fit, at worst like a destructive lie the telling of which would hollow us out, estrange us from ourselves until we feel like aliens who cannot get comfortable portraying gender roles that have been, strangely, tied to our genitalia. To get back to the idea that you may not think very much about your gender identity. Imagine for a moment that you would introduce yourself by saying, Hi, my name is Becky and I’m not exactly a woman. How would that feel? Utterly false, right? (If not, then grab a palette and start mixing your own special hue.) That’s how it feels for a nonbinary person who tries to present themselves as one of the binary genders. Singularly pink or blue—either feel utterly false in their singularity. I hope this gives you a little insight into the gender-nonbinary and how exciting it is! Imagine that all your life you’ve thought of yourself as simply pink. But now, with the realization that gender is as diverse as a limitless palette, you might realize you’d like a dab of blue with your pink for a beautiful purple, or a dollop of blue and lots of white for a bright turquoise to make that perfect shade of you. What freedom! What color! On the other hand, if you’re perfect as pink, I say, 'Beautiful' For now, that’s as much as I want to say about the nonbinary which is a term in itself, as well as a descriptor for gender diversity (more than two genders). Here's why: I really want to get what you can do! How you can navigate a world in which gender is no longer presented as purely binary in a way that makes a positive difference. So here are some seven points to guide you when you find yourself around nonbinary folks and in nonbinary spaces...
* Our common definitions of gender are also in question and slowly morphing into something more nuanced and varied. |
