So, so sick of this

[Kelly J. P.]

 One can only be oneself. To be something else causes one to cease to be, in place of someone new. Such an act could be seen as murder, provided one's mind is poetic enough.

... So, as long as causing the cessation of existence of an individual is murder's definition, I would say that it would be a crime for one to be anything other than one's own person. To be oneself might be a horrible thing to some people, and many may object to this person, but if they advocate for this person to be something other than themselves, then they are in the wrong, because that would be promoting a killing.

Hopefully that came out as silly as I wanted it to.

[Padma]

So if you let people tell you who you should be, it's suicide .

[Kelly J. P.]

 Exactly right!

[ativan]

My other self is denying that they are trying to kill me, therefore preventing suicide by murder. 
(I really am just one person, however wrong that person may be.)
This is something that I copied a couple years ago, from an Emerald post.
It has serve me well to have it on my desktop.
(Right there with the other things a crazy person puts on their desktop.)

Gender has no meaning or value if it is counterfeit.
Counterfeit gender is just a game, a trick, an amusement,
an act, a fraud, a deception, an imitation, artificial, bogus.

Be yourself, not a gender.
Being yourself is effortless and genuine.
Being yourself is REAL, not counterfeit.
In being yourself, in behaving in a manner which is natural to you,
whatever gender you are becomes self-evident.

-Emerald

Humbly,
Ativan

[Ugla]

I am really, really fed up with feminine trans women telling me that I'll be like them once I "grow up".

Seriously, it makes me want to break furniture.

I understand that everyone's got an investment in being the way they are (including me, obviously) - but I don't go around telling anyone else they ought to be like me. It feels like a conspiracy, like they're all reading from the same script. It's uncanny. And every time I get over the last one, another comes along like clockwork.

Why is it so hard to accept that there are so many different kinds of women out there, and some are not "feminine", not "womanly"?

I know, you've heard all this before from me. But seriously, it just keeps happening. AAArrrgghghgh!!!!! Saperlipopette !!!!

I totally understand what you mean. It is so frustrating when people simply assume or demand you must look like this or that. I have always thought that one of the points of all this is so show people that not everybody is the same. I do alot of educational lectures about transgender in Iceland, and one of the things I've encountered is that people don't often get the fact that transpeople, just like everybody else, are just as varied and different. In a world filled with so much diversity, why do people always insist on that people have to be one way or another?

I completely understand your frustration, I cannot even begin to describe how much this annoys me.

[Padma]

Yeah, but it's a great excuse to eat shedloads of garlic .

[Kelly J. P.]

 Garlic?

I'd turn into a bat and fly away.

[Padma]

I've turned into a cricket bat, and I'm just lying here.

[Padma]

It's just (a) good for colds, (b) the only thing I can actually taste, and (c) bloody delicious .

[Devlyn]

We have a pizza place here that serves a marinara pie rumoured to cure any cold.

[Padma]

Well, I'm still awake at 1.30 sneezing my head off (and occasionally wiping down the sneezed-up screen of my ereader - ecch...) - I'm reading this brilliant book called Circle of Change, kind of a young adult book about paganism/Wicca and the getting together of a young gay guy with a young trans man. It's very funny, and very, very sweet. A good book to be reading on a full moon night . I love the queerness of my genderqueerness .

*thoroughly over excited update*

I've just had a really major flash of insight: I'm transitioning to end my gender dysphoria (because my body not being female has always been the wrong thing) - but I'm not transitioning in order to stop being genderqueer. My dysphoria and my genderqueerness are two completely separate entities, and fundamentally, what I am and will remain is a genderqueer woman.

So there's no paradox or conflict in me. I deeply love that I'm transitioning - and I love that I'm a female, a woman, who identifies as a tomboy, as womandrogyne, as androgyne, who fancies women and men (both cis and trans)* and people whose gender I don't even know. I love that in some way (for which I have, and need, no explanation), there's a corner of my genderqueer identity that feels like a trans man.

None of this is either/or, it's all going on at once, it's all me, and it's all good.

Realising this is incredibly freeing. I feel really, really happy right now.

Sleep? Pff...

*unconscious homage à e.e. cummings - I love my unconscious!

[MadelineB]

Great Emerald quote, Ativan.

Great Epiphany, Padma.

[Padma]

I'm an epiphyte - I learn from trees .

Still awake, 4.30, oh boy...

[MadelineB]

I'm an epiphyte - I learn from trees .

Still awake, 4.30, oh boy...

You should come to Oregon. It's only 8:38 pm here. You'll get lots more sleep that way.

[Padma]

One of many time zones I've yet to visit. Oh, wait, I've been to Denver, that just counts . It's now 10 in the morning and I just woke up still full of snot but also full of happy. A poem I share for a Saturday:

the voices of the hearts of trees
have this to say:
grow... but grow slowly
grow slowly... but grow

[insideontheoutside]

It's early here, and I'm tired (been up sneezing half the night...) hence the ire.

It's the feeling I'm being treated like a child that gets to me. I have a straight woman friend the same age as me who's always been a tomboy, and she says she constantly gets people telling her she hasn't "grown up", by which they mean "take on standard gender role now please".

It's so... I don't know whether there's a word for this - normist?

(Saperlipopette is a fantastic old French expletive which I only use on special occasions - I learned it from a Tintin book.)

I just came to the realization that when I'm forced to interact with a group of females (with at least a few that know me), they often all do this thing where they go out of their way to try to "feminize" me. Throughout my whole life this has happened. And I've realized how angry this really makes me.