Category: educational

“You gon’ learn today!” In which I actually try to be knowledgeable.

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My partners and therapists have been asking how I am feeling, post-election results. That’s the easy part: Disgust. Frustration. Rage. Determination and Resolve. Exhaustion. But out of all the emotions I can list, I can’t say I was surprised. A large part of me suspected the worst case scenario, and was proven right. And I hate it when my cynicism is justified.

My secondary feelings (the “emotions-to-the-emotions”) is an overwhelming… it’s not sadness. It’s resignation.

You’ve probably seen the images circulating around of the vote breakdown according to race. Most of the votes for Trump were overwhelmingly white– very similar to how 2016 shook out. And those numbers are damning. There have been various speculation as to why this happened. I keep tabbing out of this window and coming back, trying to sum up everything.

To be honest, I don’t want to.

I don’t see the point. Others have already said, and better. In a similar vein I permanently shelved a writing project debunking racist thought patterns that arrest potential dialogue because what’s the fucking point in adding another thinkpiece to the pile that is clearly getting dismissed?

I’m resigned because the vast majority of this country does not care to actually change things for the better. It would rather uphold Whiteness, and capitalism, and systematic oppression, and all the buzzwords the average Karen will tune out than grow and improve. Stacey said, if I may be glib, that there is no point in trusting white women, because performative pink pussy hats and blue bracelets are far more easier than turning the mirror on yourself and your culture.

I am resigned to the feeling that solidarity is so, so far out of reach. In my darkest thoughts, maybe it never was.

It would be so easy to isolate, shut down, don’t stick my neck out for nobody because fuck everybody else they don’t care about me. I am exhausted at defending my very existence, and for what? Those exit poll numbers? What was the fucking point?!

But I know that is wrong. My feelings are valid, yes, but me climbing into a hole of despair, disappointment, and bitterness won’t help anyone.

That’s what they want: to isolate myself.

So I will still not only exist, but be visible. I will help where I can, any way I can. I will still try to form community bonds and friendships and other ways of living in this world. I have family created and forged that I can rely on. I know who my people are.

And I will focus on that.

Outwardly, I am much more cautious and jaded.

I’m no longer extending the olive branch of my personhood and knowledge just so maybe I’ll be seen as human and treated as such. Perhaps every once in awhile I’ll get a bee in my bonnet and discuss this sort of thing, because that is just how I roll. But it won’t be in that outward, educating voice anymore.

I find myself exasperated as some are still insisting on “meeting in the middle,” trying to “change hearts and minds,” when that energy could be spent doing more productive things.

But.

It takes all kinds in a community, doesn’t it? If someone has more patience and energy than I in this endeavor, then I wish them the best. Maybe they’ll have more luck than I ever did.

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Last month, I participated in a self-defense and empowerment course hosted by the FORGE organization. Not only is it becoming increasingly unsafe for queer people (especially queer people of color, and especially trans people of color)… the shit I pull riling up dorks on Facebook is not a great idea offline. I needed to learn the different ways to de-escalate!

These are all the notes I’ve compiled (and cleaned up…) over our four-day course. But, these are only notes. FORGE’s webinars go into greater detail, and I implore you to check it out.

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Bloganuary Prompt: What do you complain about the most?

The one thing I bitch about the most? Heteronormality.

Nah, scratch that; it’s how binary everything freakin’ is.

No, wait! How I’m expected to be androgynous because I’m non-binary.

No, wait, it’s how the [insert community here] has a racism problem it refuses to acknowledge.

Okay, let’s go with that one. It hurts my heart when I’m hit with racist microaggressions when I exist in queer-forward spaces, on top of the general history of Whiteness marginalizing anyone that isn’t white.

Wait, no, let’s take it a step further with [community] has a [bigot] problem it refuses to acknowledge, if not actively encourage. And it really hurts when it feels like these peers should get it, you know?

Because why the fuck is biphobia still a fucking problem in the overall queer community? I’ve friends who are currently shouted down and erased because they’re never seen as queer enough.

And all of my Black peers stay away from the Hoteps of the diaspora because they insist on hetero normativity, and toxic masculinity.

You know what? It’s bigoty. That’s what I complain about the most.

That’s it, that’s the post, because I’m tired of repeating myself ad nauseum. We’ll be here all day with the long list of examples I can illustrate.

A bitch is tired. I’ll probably expand on this at a later date, complete with personal anecdotes. But for now, just allow me to get to the point:

Solidarity ain’t shit when you’re still a fucking bigot.

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What Happened?!


I was leaving my house for a date; we have holiday decorations up and a bat flew into my face. It could have been a bird, but it was dusk (peak bat time!) and we do have bats that like to hang around and eat bugs. Bat (or bird) was nesting in the wreath hanging in our front door. After a few hours worrying and waffling I decided to go to the ER.


How Did It Go?


The ER visit was surprisingly fast; two hours tops. A doctor came in, asked what happened, and gave his recommendation. While it was a low-risk incident for contacting rabies, undergoing the vaccination process was ultimately up to me. And I decided to– by the time this is posted, I’d have my last shot!


Wait, ‘Last’?


Yup. While they are no longer administered in the stomach, there’s still a bunch of shots over the course of a month! Specifically on “Day 0,” then on day 3, 7, 14, and 28. As of drafting out this post, my last shot will be in two weeks.


Day 0 was easily the most stressful! In addition to the anxiety of potential rabies exposure, the initialization was 4 shots– one for each arm and leg. However, subsequent visits were only 1 shot.


Anything Else Happened?


I also called 311 and spoke to Animal Control. Since they were unable to reach me by phone, they visited me while I was in the ER. I recounted my story and showed them footage from our doorbell camera. The officers were unable to say for sure if it was a bat or a bird, but did not deny the possibility of it being a bat.


What Did It Cost You?


I live in the United States, for the record. So far, my insurance managed to cover it.


OK, Tell Me Again, but Make It Entertaining.


Seriously?


Haha, yeah. I want those goofy details.


And onto the original draft.


Continue reading →

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Two weeks ago, I had to leave an online space.


It was an oasis-in-a-desert type of online space. If you’re in a marginalized group, you know exactly the space I am talking about: the kind where it’s a safe haven, a group to contrast the harshness of the rest of the platform. No microaggressions (hopefully), calling in (as opposed to calling out) where it’s warranted (and the concerns actually heard), but most importantly: you get to be yourself.


In this instance, I was able to be Black without worrying about the white gaze; I could be unfiltered without creative code words to talk about my experiences.


Then the cishets ruined my chill. As usual.



As tempted as I am to relay in excruciating detail, I’ll hold my tongue on the specifics. Because honestly, I’ve done this song and dance too many times to not collapse it into one narrative. But one thing stood out to me about all this, is that this space tried.


They specifically noted in their guidelines that anti-queer sentiment was not tolerated. And yet, a post by a trans woman turned ugly real fast when a cisgender heterosexual man commented the usual transphobic notion that trans women might try to trick him into sleeping with them.


And the only people calling him out (and in my case, cussing him out) were other transgender people. The mods stepped in late into the game after the heavy lifting was already done. And after we used the dedicated venting space to, well, vent about this incident, the mods suggested we become mods ourselves.


Months later and that suggestion still bothers me. Because, holy shit, instead of taking out the fucking trash you gotta make your minority in a minority do your dirty work? You couldn’t do your own due diligence, as a mod and self-proclaimed ally, to clean up the mess your peers have made?



Listen.


I’m all for education. I’m all for people getting called out or in. I’m all for spaces that allow growth from being told bluntly or sweetly that you’re wrong, and this is why, and you should stop doing that.


But it’d be nice to let the rest of us know about it, first.


Because if I knew my membership dues were tolerating willful ignorance and sealioning under the guise of Educating Them, I would not have bothered joining.


Because if I knew this space was just going to be a sea of unchecked bigotry that I would have to wade through constantly because the moderators don’t care about the safety and well-being of all of their members, I would have scrolled past.


Because (and this has to be in threes), if you’re so committed to not throwing anyone out of the group, even if they have repeatedly spouted harmful rhetoric, even if they have repeatedly made the space unsafe for some members, then I would have told you to fuck off.



I am a fierce defender of the spaces I call mine.


While I do agree with spaces that are a little forgiving for people that don’t know better (or simply didn’t know), my tolerance tends to be lower than most for two reasons. Both have me occasionally clash with how some spaces are ran:


  • I’ve dealt with too much damn trolling to tolerate that bullshit I’m more aware of common bad faith arguments and derailment techniques… and therefore have no patience for them, and
  • I’m a subscriber to Good is Not Nice. My interpretation is this: I won’t sugar coat my language, and I will certainly cuss your ass out if I get mad enough.


And for my spaces, I run them differently: there is room to grow but the safety of my members is paramount. And if a member is constantly making others unsafe or otherwise jeopardizes their well-being, well. They’ll just have to learn elsewhere.


It crystalizes into my first rule: No one’s safety is worth anyone else’s lessons.


And if a space appears to not adhere to this, I just leave. I fight too many battles as it is. Some, alone, and I don’t want to add another where the tide may be against me.



The last comment I replied to was somesuch bullshit about trans women. At this point he was a broken record of willful ignorance. I’ve lost track of my comments, and how many people have tried talking to him. And there were more like him that wouldn’t be thrown off the island, so to speak.


So I said, simply, “shut up.”


And I left the group.

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Throwback Thursday: Originally posted to the VerboseTerse instance at Mon, 29 Oct 2018 03:45:51. This may also look familiar if you follow me on a certain social media site with a black background.


“Singular they,” I say. “Those are my pronouns.”[1]


Very recently I’ve come against some resistance with my pronouns… but not quite in the way you’d think. There was no malice, and confusion took its place.


For context, I’m American. And on top of that, I’m mono-lingual and the only language I’m fluent in is English. It took the other party voluntarily disclosing that English was their second language for me to have a “light bulb moment.”


And when I was confronted, again, with “but they is plural!” at a local gaming event soon after, I was able to recognize that same confusion.


“Hang on. Is English your native language?”


It was not.


Instead of refuting the many tired arguments as to why someone wouldn’t want to use Singular They[2], I was forced to consider a different tactic.



One major take-away from these interactions was more of a reminder of how classrooms can be horribly rigid in what they teach. Especially when it comes to English. When I was in the school system it never seemed to allow for nuances of different dialects and cultures, linguistic drift, and (yeah imma go here right quick) creativity. It appears that that hasn’t changed.


So ESL students go in the classroom, and come out with these preconceived notions of how English should work, only for the language itself to generally throw curveballs at you anyway.


Trust me. If it wasn’t going to be my Singular They/Them pronouns, it would have been something else. The Habitual Be. The Appalachian drawl. The ongoing war of Soda Vs. Pop. And English just being a fucking weird language on its own.


And no language is static unless it is dead.


My advice? Practice. Keep an ear out for cues. Immerse yourself in different, real environments. Do some readin’, here for example. Ask respectful questions.


Don’t beat yourself up when (yes, when) you screw up. We all do, even us native speakers, because there’s also the deprogramming of binary gender constructs to consider.[3]


Practice. It gets easier in time, honest.


And uh, sorry you had to learn this the hard way.



[1] I also use a set of neo-pronouns (zie/hir), but they are not the focus of this piece.


[2] “It’s not grammatically correct!” is a fairly common one, as well as the claim that “no one ever uses it.” But, you know, sometimes someone just uses that as an excuse to be an unaccommodating buttmunch.


[3] And this’ll be a whole can of worms for another time.