Self-Identity

One thing that I love about the queer community is the appreciation of self-identity. This extends beyond sexuality and gender identities, but into all aspects of life. I've noticed myself and others speaking about almost anything in terms of an identity: anything from social class, to political orientation, to emotional conditions, to simple descriptor words like "a flirt" or "stoner" have beecome things you do or don't identify as. However, the community is also especially accepting of the fact that not all people's identities fit a label. Identities like "queer", for example, are flexible and have no solid definition, allowing people to identify however they wish.

In discussions about different identities, I've often had people say something along the lines of "why do we need to label?" or "labels are for jars!".  I've found this to be very frustrating, mostly because it hinders discussion, but also because, in my opinion, someone's self-identity is an integral part of who a person is, and an important aspect of how we understand ourselves. Although not every person may need a label to understand who they are and not all people have a label that fits them, I don't feel that way at all. Instead, I am constantly searching for the identity that suits me the best, and this is constantly on my mind. If labels are for jars, I must be full of pickles.

In the greater context of philosophy of language and metaphysics, however, such a perspective seems to go against everything I believe it. The view that I most often subscribe to sees the world as one whole. However, when we choose to define something in this whole (usually through language), we pull it out of whole. Once we define "chair", we no longer have one, but two: "chair", and everything other than "chair".  My personal favorite philosophy, Daoism, describes this very perspective:

All in the world recognize the beautiful as beautiful.
Herein lies ugliness.
All recognize the good as good.
Herein lies evil.

Therefore
Being and non-being produce each other.
Difficulty and ease bring about each other.
Long and short delimit each other.
High and low rest on each other.
Sound and voice harmonize each other.
Front and back follow each other.

Therefore, the sage abides in the condition of wu-wei.
And carries out the wordless teaching.
Here, the myriad things are made, yet not separated.

-- Daodejing Ch 2

The Tao produces one, one produces two.
The two produce the three and the three produce all things.

-- Daodejing Ch 42

By abandoning definitions and dichotomies, you can become one with the Dao.  Thus, I think Lao Tzu would discourage us from creating and claiming labels. However, I find this somehow counter-intuitive. I would rather we have a plethora of labels to choose from and be able to create our own as we see fit than subscribe to a limiting binary. Though it would be nice to eliminate labels entirely, I don't see that happening any time soon: whenever we meet someone, they're going to want to know if we're gay or straight (well, actually whenever we meet someone, they'll assume we're straight, but if they question it, they'll want to know); I'd much rather be able to tell them I'm "queer" then identify as "neither of those" as I attempt to break down the structure of labels. Somehow, it seems that if we keep adding labels and making them acceptable, eventually, we will break down this structure, and it will be much more pleasant and effective than trying to forcefully destroy it the other way around.


Another element of self-identity that has been on my mind is the idea of "self": if we decide to do so, can we identify as whatever we wish? I've seen a few discussions recently about appropriation and misuse of identities such as queer, genderqueer, and even ally. This seems right on par with another Eastern philosophical tradition: Confucianism. Daoism, as I discussed, rejects labels and names, and it was in many ways intentionally built to contrast with Confucianism, which instead puts a very strong emphasis on names. One major element of the Confucian tradition is the rectification of names: one must act like whoever they are to actually be that person. For example, a "king" is a kind ruler who rules for his subjects. A selfish ruler who cares more about profit than rightness and humaneness is not a "king", but a "tyrant". Now, I'm not trying to say that there's a certain way someone must act to really be genderqueer, but I do think that Confucius would agree with anarchafemme on Questioning Transphobia. I think that article does a really good job with discussing the problems associated with the appropriation of any identity, and actually being something is an integral part of identifying as such.

Spring has come!

I officially declare yesterday the first day of spring. Not so much because it was really really warm, such days happen often during winter in Colorado, but because it felt like springtime. Thursday night it snowed, and yesterday it was more than 50 degrees, and I love Colorado. In the spring, the mood swings get slightly worse than usual. They happen just as often, but the snowstorms are bigger and the warm days are warmer.

My weather-dependent mood follows. I start running whenever I'm alone: running to class like one of those kids, running to my room in the middle of the night, running because I'm too impatient to walk. I get excited, bouncy, giddy; I sit still less than I usually do. I also get paranoid. On the other hand, I feel sadder and lonelier. Little things set me off (I was reading Kozol's Savage Inequalities yesterday, and I started crying, but then, that's a really sad book.

I'm so excited for spring.

PS. While on the Hop last night, we were having a conversation about spring and later seasons in general, and the entire bus participated. It made me so happy to see people actually talk to each other!

Mind/Body

I've written a few blogs recently that mentioned my relationship with my body, so I decided that this is something worth blogging about, considering it's something I live with constantly.

Perhaps there was a time when we were one, a time when we were young and happy and fresh. Somehow, I doubt even that. I feel like my relationship with my body has been wrong and lacking something since I've been alive. Some of these things I remember feeling when I was still in Russia, meaning I was at most six years old.  Still, no doubt that this was once just an afterthought on the periphery of my life. Today, it's a constant struggle, dead center stage.

I've never felt attached to my body. I've always considered it a vessel for myself, a trap, a prison. I sometimes thought that death and only death could free me from my body. My body didn't fit me. Sometimes, I felt like it was too large for me, I was like a rattle. Other times, it was too small, and I was squished. Most of the time, it was some of both.

My body developed a personality of its own. It would have mood swing: random moods, unrelated to how I was physically feeling or what my mental mood was.  And it was powerful. When my body-mood was at it's worst, my mind would inadvertently follow.  My body-mood could impact how I feel more than any occurrences, more than any emotional downfalls, more than anything else. I became a slave to my body.

Then, the real physical symptoms set in. Not the crazy "mood" stuff that for which I could barely pinpoint a physical sensation, but real feelings: shooting pains in my legs, arms and face; hypersensitivity; motor tics. I saw doctors, got MRIs, everything. But there was no cause. Conversion disorder: physical symptoms for psychological reasons.

The tics are the worst. It's real mind vs body battle. On one hand, there's the body, completely in pain, growing tense, a sensation, a desire to do something I don't want to do. On the other hand, there's the mind, trying to withhold, because if I do it once, I'll do it again, and again, and again, because these tics can and do hurt me. But the pain grows, the tension builds, my body wins. I move. And I know that I consciously willed that movement, only I really couldn't help it.

Now, there were days when my body-mood was awful, but other days, I would barely notice it, it was just in the corner of my mind somewhere, and I'd feel somewhat normal. It took me a long time to realize that even at the best of times I'm not in the best of states.

May 09 I tripped psycoblin mushrooms for the first time in my life. While my mind experience extreme euphoria and deep, scattered thought, most of my trip took place in my body. My body experienced what I can best describe as a return to normalcy.  Suddenly, we were one. I walked, raving about how amazing it is, that I'm walking, not my feet, those strange foreign body parts way off in some other land. No, I was walking. I was touching. I was feeling. I was moving. I was climbing a tree, a tree with the lowest branch so high up, I never thought I could dare climb it. But I did! There was so much I could do that I never knew before.

After the trip, my entire perspective on my relationship with my body has changed. I no longer try to battle my body every step of the way, but instead, I am working to become one with it.  It's difficult. My tool is yoga. Yoga helps me feel strong, powerful, and connected. Since moving to Boulder, I've been doing yoga at the Wesley Fellowship, and it's been great: the instructor is amazing, and it's really helping my relationship with my body. However, each step of the way is a struggle. Except for the occasional yoga-high, I still never feel in my body, and, at times, the gap between us is so huge, I can't help but roll up in a ball and

cry.

Eleven

Four days before the end of the month, I'm writing this blog post, the eleventh one in the month of February '10. Thus, February, the shortest month of the year, is, as of now, the month I've blogged the most, outnumbering even September '09, when I was a experiencing a blogging honeymoon phase with 10 posts. There are a lot of things I'd meant to blog for quiet a while, and, this last week, I've been blogging every day, multiple times a day, often, because I'd been in the mood. As this mood continues, expect more posts. But, I assure you, this is just a phase. Don't let a plethora of words scare you away from reading about my life!

I love you all <3

PS. My sidebar now features some of the blogs I follow. Check it out, I follow cool blogs.

a softer world

Today I'm posting comics, because all the cool kids are doing it.

But really, recently I read over all of a softer world, which is absolutely amazing. I bookmarked 38 that I liked, but finally, after a lot of thinking, I chose the seven that I like the most, and decided to share them on my this here blog. (Choosing only seven was almost impossible.) The sentence above each is the scroll-over text.

maybe 1996 was

it was like being high. nobody wanted to be around me

 

now the collection agencies have armies.

 

and progress and the future

Smash the state? Nah. I'll just ignore it and hope it ignores me.

I wouldn't make a very good doctor, for instance.


Don't get me wrong. My vagina is awesome.

It's pretty amazing and I suggest you read them all.

Next up, I plan to re-read all of xkcd and once again bookmark my favorites.

I am frustrated.

I am frustrated because today is one of those days, in every single way.

I am frustrated with the word "bisexual". I am frustrated because I think it goes against everything our community believes in. I am not frustrated with the fact that some people are bisexual, that some people may prefer binary gender identities or gender presentations to non-binary gender identities and gender presentations, but I'm frustrated with people for whom this isn't true that use that term out of convenience without even giving it a second though.

I am frustrated with the trinary of sexualities: L G B, and I'm frustrated because I try to explain "queer", "pan", "fluid" to people around me, and in the end, many simply conclude that I'm bi, erasing my attraction to non-binary individuals, and erasing the existence of non-binary individuals.

I am frustrated with the word "biphobia" because it means practically the same thing as "monosexism", only biphobia refers to phobia of bisexuality, while monosexism refers to phobia of various non-monosexual orientations.

I am frustrated with pansexual people who say that, to them, gender "doesn't matter". That they don't see a person's gender, but just the person "inside". Because, you know what, gender does matter. And, sure, maybe you don't have a preference for a certain gender, but it's an integral part of your partners identity, so you can't just pretend it's not there, and then act like you're somehow more enlightened than others because of your supposed lack of sexuality. And I'm frustrated because this alone is making me shy away from identifying as panromantic, although I feel like it's the term that best fits me.

I am frustrated with the hostility I am facing as a gray-a sexual. I am frustrated with people insisting that this is something that I need to fix, that I haven't met the right person and need to try to, that it's not normal. I've had a healthier sex life than most of the sexual people I know. I am sick and tired of people assuming that they know me better than I know myself, and that I can't be happy without sex.

I am frustrated because my romantic orientation is apparently not as "real" as a sexual person's. Because I recently told a friend that I am, somewhat, polyamorous and curious about polyamory, and she said "well, you're also a romantic asexual", as if that makes me any less polyamorous.

I am frustrated because I do have a somewhat unusual relationship with my body, and that recently, people have been acting like there's something wrong with that. Like, a friend of mine said that I'm "ignoring my vagina", which I'm not, I know my body much, much better than the vast majority of women, and I know very well how I relate to it. My relationship with my body is very healthy, and I don't see why it has to be the same as everyone else assigned female at birth. I am me, I am not everyone else.

I am tired of the biological determinism in the gay and lesbian communities. I am frustrated with gays and lesbians expressing a disgust in "vagina" or "penis" to prove their sexuality.  I am frustrated because it puts the focus on sex, alienating queer romantic asexuals. But mostly, I am frustrated because I think that's very, very transphobic.

I am frustrated with my body. I am frustrated with the way it feels and the way I relate to it. I am annoyed because I have issues with PVI, because it's uncomfortable at best and painful at worst; and I wish I was at least ambivalent to it, and could occasionally enjoy it as I do with oral, anal, and other types of sex. I am frustrated with the fact that no one else seems to have a sex identity quiet like mine, and I honestly don't think there's even a word to describe how I feel about my physical sex.

I am exhausted from questioning. I've been questioning my sexuality since I knew it was possible for a girl to like girls. I've been questioning my gender identity since I was a child. I've been questioning my (a)sexuality since before I had sex. And I'm still questioning it all. And, you know what, "fluid" is the perfect word to describe me in all respects, but somehow, it isn't enough. As I'm experiencing an ardent phase, I'm beginning to wonder: what if I'm not asexual? As I lean towards men, I'm beginning to wonder: what if I'm straight? And I'm so. fucking. tired of it.

I am frustrated because I feel like people have been disrespecting me lately, because I think I'm being much too patient with a few friends.

I am frustrated and I feel lonely.

Last night, I had a dream that someone drugged us all, and we talked and talked about the deepest things, and then we cried. But, when we woke up, we couldn't remember any of it. We were safe: safe from the danger of intimacy, safe from others knowing who we are, safe from anyone seeing us cry. Yet we felt so much better after the drugs had worn off, so much closer, so much lighter. We talked about everything. When I woke up in the morning, I was back to this silent world.

Can we please talk?

My Political Identity

Questioning. Sounds like me, right? Actually, if it was more like me, it would be fluid, but I don't think that counts as a political identity.

I used to identify as libertarian. Socially liberal and economically conservative. As you can imagine, this would follow naturally from my upbringing. My family has experienced first-hand the terrors of the Communist Soviet Union and spoke of them often, and the political leaning of the Soviet Union is on the other side of the spectrum from libertarian. My stepdad is a CEO who started his small business from scratch, my mother is a neurologist who single-handedly worked to become a doctor in the US.  The entrepreneurial, independent spirit is very alive in my family, and this spirit asks for economic independence, rather than government intervention in such matters. Economically conservative. However, my family's political concerns did not include social issues. I figured those out on my own: why would ever make something illegal if it doesn't affect you at all? Socially liberal. I fell in love with libertarian ideas the moment I first learned about them. To me, they seemed like everything the United States stood for: freedom. The government is only there to protect your rights: right to life, right to property. (Here's a 2D political spectrum, with a red dot where I used to place myself).

Recently, I've begun to question this orientation.  I'm impressed by the fact that countries that are considered socialist are very healthy, happy countries. Take, for instance Norway, that has the highest Human Development Index, second place in the Global Peace Index, and a 1.0 (meaning full equality) in the Gender Parity Index. So now I'm beginning to wonder: am I wrong? Perhaps socialism - real, balanced socialism, not the corrupt communism I always hear about from personal anecdotes concerning my family's experiences - perhaps it's a good thing.

That being said, I think in politics, I think we often forget the big picture. We continuously bicker - liberal vs conservative, left vs. right, democrat vs republican, omgz-you're-a-communist vs well-you're-a-fucking-fascist. In all reality, our system of government is Socio-Democratic Liberalism. That's the form of government in the US and in Norway, the form advocated by the right and the left. That's really what we're dealing with. Period.