adventures in alternate economies

So, now that people are actually paying attention to what I do here, I think it's time I work on making it more pleasant to look at. I like this look, but it looks like fifty hojillion other blogs out there, and the fact is, I don't have the tech savvy to do much else with it, nor the money to properly pay someone else to.
So here's my proposition: I have a lot of strange and wonderful stuff kicking around in my basement from when I did salvage work. If anyone's willing to give me a hand with site design and redecorating, I will be happy to send them stuff they might want, shipping paid--there's a DVD player, a dentist's overhead lamp, a two-foot-tall statue of Doctor Doom, an ornate Go board, all sorts of stuff. Anyone who sends me an email, to the address listed in my profile, with a genuine offer of help, I'd love to chat with about interesting barters. I cannot really be certain of the monetary value of a bunch of this stuff, there's a huge variety, and it's getting garage-saled or pawned anyway, since I'm also not savvy enough to work eBay.
Let me know.

UPDATE: Frigging Blogger.
Okay, so I've been doing some fiddling, trying to make things a little smoother, experimenting with tags on posts, that sort of thing. What this has resulted in is every single one of them being reposted a couple of times on Taking Steps' livejournal feed, including some incomplete, drafted posts and notes on posts that won't go away even though they're not posted here. This is kind of a pain. For those of you reading my feed, I apologize for the mess. Please extend the courtesy of not judging unfinished work till it's finished, as well; it'll be posted in due time and be much more interesting then. I'll figure this-all out eventually.

a parable

Ravenm reminds me of a story I've wanted to tell for a while, because it was deeply formative in regard to how I constructed my worldview, politics, and general feeling about people afterward. You'll see.

When I was in eighth grade, there was a new fad in physical education classes. It involved the sort of rope games and trust exercises one gets at some summer camps, I'm told--I never went to camp myself. You would join hands with another person and support each other while walking parallel low tightropes. You would balance on a short post while someone else spotted you.

This was all before I had decided to create a male persona and present as normative for my own safety, a decision that may have saved my life and conferred on me a number of privileges, but which ended up carrying a price, as any sacrifice must. I had taken enough daily degradation at that point that I had stopped considering myself a human being, and had been profoundly depressed since somewhere around my first attempt on my life at the age of eight. Teachers looked on when I was thrown down and beaten with hockey sticks in gym class. I lost track of the times I was hit or threatened on the bus home, had my clothes flushed down the toilet, any number of things. I figured the world didn't want me, and I didn't want it, and I would bide my time until I could make a mark--a symbol, a cipher, a flare-out for a cause--and then quietly make my escape. I never expected to get to be a whole person, so why not lie and get by? Choosing to put myself aside, in my mid-teens, and spend a few years getting what benefit I could out of masculine posturing was a selfish decision, but it made life tolerable enough that I was eventually able to make some friends, do my schoolwork, and keep it together long enough to make it almost to college before the closet became unbearable again and life got much more complicated and much more fulfilling. It kept me from hurting anyone for a while, even if all the violence was turned inward, and that was enough.
This is just background. Gym class. Right.

So the final game went something like this: in the stand of woods out back behind the football field, a little wooden platform had been installed about five feet up a pine tree. Everyone took turns climbing up to the platform, one at a time. The one on the platform would face the tree trunk. Ten students would line up in two lines, under the teacher's direction, facing each other, underneath, their arms outstretched and interlacing. The student on the platform would fall backwards off the platform, be caught by the collective effort of the rest of the class, and be placed safely on the ground.
I was second-to-last to go. I was terrified. I think they knew that. But I decided to take the plunge and try to put faith--if not in my fellow human beings--in the system enforcing their behavior, since everyone else had gotten out okay. I closed my eyes as I fell, but not fast enough to miss seeing, in my peripheral vision, every one of those students, in unison, take a step backward and allow me to fall, some of them laughing.
Except one. One blur of movement: one girl I didn't really know arresting her backward step and coming back, one pair of hands hitting my back in a futile effort just before I hit the ground, hard.

It was a small injury--some bruises and the wind knocked out of me--but I had a moment, staring at the sky through the treetops, to learn a lesson. There were two immediately available:

1. Given the chance, people will be bastards.

2. No matter how many people unite in cruelty, someone will always try to do the right thing. Even if it isn't enough, it still matters.

As that one girl asked if I was okay, I decided that that first lesson was not going to make me a better person, and that the second was the one worth learning. That was one of the days I finally got around to joining the human race. It was one of the moments of kindness that taught me that there was something to hope for in this life, something worth sticking around for. It was an opportunity to decide if I would be identified by what was broken, or what was whole; by hate for those who had hurt me, or love for those who refused; by what other people had done to me, or what I believed people could do for each other.

Every now and then, when it gets difficult to remember what to work for in this world, I remember the feeling of those two small hands hitting my back.

public service announcement

It has come to my attention that Heart is accusing me of plagiarism, with the help of her commenters.

Now, mind you, she is doing it at her place, where I am not welcome to respond, and she has left neither a comment nor a trackback to present her position to me to my figurative face. She has levelled a fairly serious accusation at me, in other words, without telling me and in fairly explicit terms, without giving me a chance to challenge her in actual conversation--and, by the way, I caught that snide "she or he" in there, Heart, and considering that you've interacted with me many times and read the piece, you know exactly what you were doing, there. Tagging your post 'War on Women' and 'Male Terrorism' goes a little further in clarifying your intentions.

I don't really want to dignify it with a response, but I have a lot of new readers right now, and I feel like they deserve some clarification, so I'll do it here.

Now, I've never read Robin Morgan before. The poem Heart quotes is a hell of a piece of work, and in other circumstances, I'd thank her for giving me some new reading material. I will see, once I know Morgan's work, how to go about honoring her legacy to feminism.
To claim, however, that Ms. Morgan, or radical feminism, are the only place I could have gotten inspired to work with the imagery of monsters and struggle, a major theme for discussing human experience--especially that of desolation and radical Othering--for the entirety of recorded history, is patently ludicrous. To accuse me of stealing another woman's work simply because she and I shared some source material much older than either of us, regarding themes that have direct bearing on my life and experiences and which, as someone raised on a lifelong love affair with history and mythology, I have been marinating in since early childhood--themes I have worked with before, over and over--is ridiculous. We don't even use the reclamation of monsterhood in the same way. You might as well say I stole my imagery from Sesame Street--they make "monster" a positive thing, too, don't they?

Is it that frightening for you to read someone like me actually achieving something like self-acceptance, or deriving strength from having been ground into the ground and refusing to break? Are you so threatened by the idea that I might be proud of my life or that I might reject attempts to shame my deviant body that your first instinct, on reading my declaration that I refuse to roll over and die, is to denigrate, accuse, and sneak about trying to undermine it? Are you so far gone that your first reaction to someone writing about getting past hurt and trying to live life fiercely in a hostile world is to say, 'wait! I'm the only one who gets to talk about overcoming adversity! Anyone claiming to be something decent in life is just trying to steal from me!' and this doesn't worry you? Because that proves only that you didn't understand what I was writing, and further, that you've proved my point.
You can go on calling me whatever you like, but you've got a long line in front of you if you want to see me bleed. Some of the people in it even have the ovaries to say things to me directly.
Keep kicking.

And hey, thanks for driving up my hit counter.

Edited to add: Because I am being called a "liar" in regard to the first sentence of this post, I should clarify. Heart did not use the word "plagiarism." She simply claimed I was stealing the ideas of another writer without credit, which is very different, and made applauding comments when other people used the word "plagiarism." I apologize for the misunderstanding; I also should not attribute to her, for instance, the reference to me as "it," since that was done by a commenter not herself who she merely told that she "loves the way [she] think[s]"--she is not in any way, by her own affidavit, "transphobic," nor would any such inclination be involved in the substance of this dispute; I am assured Heart found my piece "moving."
Additionally, the charges have been modified to include "appropriation"--that is, a white American woman is asking that I refrain from using imagery pertaining to female-presented deities including those from a Middle Eastern, Asian and/or Pacific Islander cultural heritage (that is to say, my ancestors) as this constitutes "colonization." Additionally, goddesses with transsexual priesthoods, if they are mother-figures, are off-limits. Actually, this probably also includes the ocean, and the earth, and pretty much anything concave, for caution's sake.
Also, the literature of feminists predating the radical movement should be considered inadmissible, as well, due to having already being claimed. Further, laying any claim to my ancestry is probably gauche, as belonging is sort of like owning, which is a patriarchal sort of thing to engage in, and it would prove as such that I am really a man. I therefore freely admit I have no right whatsoever to read or reference anything related to my religious practice, ancestral culture, or favorite childhood reading material, as this may or may not be subject to the Dibs! Act of 1967, wherein they had a flag stuck in them by people who have never prayed to my gods, had their countries invaded by European powers, or bothered to study other branches of the movement they also claimed through that same statute, viz., feminism.
I also have no right to interest in feminism, because I might once have made $1.00 to the $0.75 I will be making for the rest of my life, had I had a chance to be employable during those formative childhood years.
Also, apparently I have had some surgeries I was not aware of. One of these may or may not have been the addition of someone else's stolen skin. I will take care to provide more information about those in the future.
Also, my work was apparently about erasing the work of prior generations by producing content myself, in continuity with another branch of the greater feminist movement, rather than simply quoting people I did not know about who, I'm told, would disapprove of everything I represent. With my apologies, please consider this addition to the canon transparent, then, so that prior generations are still visible and can continue to be found in bookstores and libraries and schools across this fair land.
In addition, I encourage you all to read the work of Robin Morgan, who I am assured is pretty good, and who wrote at least one poem that I have now read and enjoyed, though I have to admit I prefer Anne Sexton's, repeated in comments below. I would, but I'm not allowed to--or at least, were I to, I wouldn't be allowed to talk about it. Still, please do it in my stead.
I hope we've cleared this up and can move on to more constructive pursuits. I apologize for my errors in wording, and for my laxity in making these corrections more swiftly.

echoes

While we're at it, by way of reminder, this is what I wrote for this day last year.
Still dancing, folks. Hold on.

the seam of skin and scales

I am not a woman trapped in a man's body. This body is no man's; it is mine, it is me, and there is no man in that equation. And I am not trapped in it. There are a million and one ways out of this body, and I have clung to it, tooth and claw, despite an endless line of people and institutions who would rather I vacate the premises, and have sometimes been willing to make me bleed to convince me they're right.

This body is mine, and I claim it and its bruises, and it is not a man's, and I am not trapped here. I have looked leaving my body in the eye and I have said, in the end, hell no. There is too much to do, too much to love, too many who need one more of us to say hell no and help them say the same.
You might not like it. It might be a wrongness to you.

I am done with traps. I am done with the philosophy of traps, and I am done with the feminism of who owns my body for what cause.
It is time for something that tells you that I am here for blood--my blood, the blood of my loved ones, the blood of the people who have battered themselves against my life and found me still here.


It is time for a feminism of the monstrous.


That is this body. That is this me. That is the voice that says get your names off of my parts and your hands off them too, that says stop colonizing my reality and telling me what I mean without listening to a word I say.

What I say may be in a language incomprehensible, but there is a time for that, and it is right now, because this is a monster's creed. It is for the cobbled-together, the sewn-up, the grafted-on. It is for the golden, the under-the-earth, the foreign, the travels-by-night; the filthy ship-sinking cave-dwelling bone-cracking gorgeousness that says hell no, I am not tidy. I am not easy. I am not what you suppose me to be and until you listen to my voice and look me in my eyes, I will cling fast to this life no matter how far you drive me, how deep, with how many torches and pitchforks, biting back the whole way down. I will not give you my suicide. I will not give you my surrender.

This is for the Lilim, because you forget that the next part after your co-opted icon parts ways with Adam and goes her own way is and she begat monsters, and she becomes terrifying. This is for the Gorgons and the vampires and the chimaeras, for Cybele and Baba Yaga, Hel and Ashtoreth, for Lamia and Scylla, for Kali and Kapo 'ula-kina'u. This is for all of them with teeth.

It is time to look the monstrous in the eye. It is time. It is time to say that we are beautiful in our fierceness, and that we are our own. We are not the rejected of what we can never be. We are what we were meant to be. We are not pieces of wholes thrown together incorrectly. We are not mistakes.
We are not inferior knockoffs of someone else. If our monstrousness is frightening, then it is time we bare our teeth and draw that fear close to us and stop being so afraid of our fearsomeness that we fear everyone and everything else right back.

I am throwing my head back, here, and saying it: no more being afraid. Hell no. My monstrousness is not a place of shame. It is a strength. It is the power to say I am mine, and I will tell you what I mean. Not you. I am not any thing trapped in anyone's body. I am tougher than that, and I have plenty of blood to spare in this body of mine, and plenty more miles to go before any of you can bring me to my knees, and I dare you to try.

I am choosing to stay here, and it is mine to choose. And if that means changing shape, if that means putting together the unexpected, that is any monster's ancient right. It is damn well traditional.
The only ones setting traps are the ones in our way.
There. There's my teeth. There's my cause.

Boo.
Hiss.
Keep kicking: a thousand, thousand slimy things lived on. And so. Did. I.

building blocks

Well, at piny's request, I'm going to put up another thread while I'm at it.
The aforementioned thread at Alas has gone where it will, but there are still building blocks--even the brightly-colored kind you clonk together as a wee bairn--to get out of our frustrations.
Someone over there suggested that trans people's primary goals in organizing are, basically, to kick at the feminist movement and complain.
I think we can do better in defining our goals, even if nobody else is listening except when it's convenient.

What are--and what should be--the philosophical, practical and pragmatic concerns of the transgender-movement-such-as-it-is? I've got some ideas, but seeing the quality of discussion there's been here already, I'm also excited to see what you-all have to say. Suggestions from non-trans people, of course, are welcome.

I'll be moderating.

if you prick me, do I not--oh, hell, never mind.

Okay, so. I'm trying not to turn into the Trans Blogger OMG, and eventually I'll get back to my drafted posts on politics, race, and Martians, but.

Having observed the sudden degeneration of this thread at Amp's, I am trying hard to find a way to spin this conversation constructively. I wanted to put up a post outlining the various common red herrings, derails, and so on that we find in these conversations, and then brainstorm ways to counteract them.

Then I realized that's been done before, notably by Piny, multiple times even. And it is frustrating as hell considering doing it again. With a couple exceptions (the Christmas-miracle conversion in the comments at Women of Color Blog comes to mind) who are we addressing? The people already dug-in in their prejudices? Us, to better our defenses, again, when we've got our defenses up all the time anyway? I can't imagine either group hasn't heard these before, at least in the endless go-rounds in Blogsville. Either you're not listening or you've already heard too much, and either way it's exhausting.

So.

In the interests of not burning out on yet another unproductive debate, trying to convince someone who doesn't want to hear it that the patriarchy does not in fact love and cuddle trans people, I thought maybe we could do something more interesting.

We could try reminders that we're not abstract constructs. In that vein, I thought--if it's not too personal--we could talk about, well, each other. Our loved ones, those missing, those who need remembering. It may not be the Time of Year For It, but I don't care. Too many good people aren't next to us and deserve better than derision, and for a lot of us, it's a large part of why we fight instead of just getting ours and walking.

I miss my friend Charlie Rose, right now. I think we could have had a lot of good conversations that we never will.

How about you?

the pitch

So it's time, once again, to vote for the prom court of Blogitania.
It's not really anything like a big deal, of course, but I think it's a nice opportunity to give props to people we appreciate, out there. BFP, Bitch|Lab, Piny, and Belle are already nominated in a bunch of categories. Heck, I'm even up for a couple, though I might remind the savvy reader, shamelessly, that I am, among other things, a new blogger of the consonant-level variety, concerned with, oh, human equality and suchlike.
Anyhow, a lot of the same big bloggers are getting nominated over and over, and many of them are fairly mainstream-left sorts of folks, which is well and good, but I certainly wouldn't mind seeing more of our crazed fringe element holding our own in there. Go forth and nominate as many folk as you like, comrades. And then wait patiently to get harassed about voting.
Someone you like might even get to have that slow dance with the little tiara and everything.