liminal_luke

How does surrogate corpse get across town?

She takes public transit.

The time is coming, mark my words, when being trans will be depressingly normal.  Enjoy your freaky malevolence while you can.

Just now, surrogate corpse said:

 

they tell me i'm malevolent. perhaps i am malevolent, perhaps i am the threat they say i 

 

I can´t comment on your malevolence or lack thereof, but I´m not going to forget the penis of feminine power anytime soon.

I´m reminded of the time, many years ago, when I strolled through Portland´s Saturday market hand-in-hand with my then boyfriend.  Even in uber-liberal Portland, Oregon we still got looks, albeit mostly of shocked approval.  I´m a fairly introverted person and not used to taking "center stage" but I remember thinking there was a strange power in being able to command attention just by holding hands.  All things considered, I wish my public handholding was an everyday event, but if ya gotta be a freak I guess ya might as well lean in.  Was I being malevolent?  Some probably thought so.

10 minutes ago, surrogate corpse said:

It is going to vary by person, but err on the side of referring to them by the gender they are, even when speaking about their past.

 

In terms of the "metaphysics" of it, there is a sense in which I "was once a boy" and a sense in which I "have always been a girl"—it's a complex messy history and which way I choose to speak depends on which aspect I want to highlight and what mix of feelings I'm having about it at any given.

 

You can fairly well predict that any trans person has complex feelings about the time they had to spend living out a false gender. Better to be on the safe side and affirm your recognition of the gender they are, without calling attention to that history.

 

(You can also, of course, use a gender neutral term like "kid" or "child")

Thanks this issue came up with my mom´s partner and his transwoman daughter.  My mom´s partner wanted to share memories of his daughter´s childhood "when she was a boy."  This didn´t go over well.  He´d saved a bunch of childhood toys for her and she didn´t want them, seemed to want to disavow her past.  This was understandably difficult for my mom´s partner.

I have a question.  Is it better to refer to a transgender person as always having been the gender they transitioned into?  Is it OK when taking to a transgender woman, for instance, to say "when you were a boy..."?  

Just now, blue eyed snake said:

 

although some spiritually minded people would like to have their sexual lust taken away, somehow I think you are not one of them.

 

Mine was taken by some disease of the body and I do not like that one bit, take care you keep yours, don't increase the risk by jokingly talking about it..

Oh, thank you for clarifying.  I really didn´t know what you meant.  And you´re right that I don´t want my sexual lust taken away.  

1 hour ago, Maddie said:

 

I'm a Daoist immoral 😌

Me too.  It´s tough not following precepts and all, but, on the bright side, we´re not bad Buddhists. Just look on the internet: those fellas know a thing or two about ethical lapses. Fortunately, you´re asexual which really cuts down on the suffering.  As for myself, it hurts when potential bootie callers claim they can´t find my apartment.  I keep telling them....go through the mysterious gate, go through the mysterious gate.  But they never do.  So I end up staying up all night beating the heavenly drum.  Seriously though, ya spend the best decades of your life traipsing through China in search of lost teachings, and then, when you´re finally old and wise, nobody wants to drink from your gourd.  Life sucks and then ya don´t die.   

1 minute ago, Maddie said:

 

I like being asexual 🙂

Not to give myself too much credit or anything, but I kinda knew that.

5 minutes ago, blue eyed snake said:

 

don't talk of the well you do not want to drink

I´m not exactly sure what you mean (is the well asexuality or lesbian sex or a particular body part that will go unnamed?) but I´m just joking around.  

2 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

I have a gay friend that loves trans men. But one thing interesting I noticed was once I started transitioning gay men stopped flirting with me and lesbians started lol.

Asexuality is sounding better and better.

22 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

I mean I think I agree because I had been wanting to get rid of that thing ever since I was little for that reason.

One of my best gay buddies has a thing for transmen but not me.  I´m all about the dick.  If I was in a carousing space and had a choice between a transman and a transwoman with a dick, well, I´d go for the transwoman every time.  Guess that makes me bi.  Wait till I tell my mom!

Whew...this has been quite the ride.  I often rethink my posts after I´ve written them and decided to let a few of my latest entries go.  What came over me?  This thread was winding down nicely and it seemed everyone had settled into a cozy and nearly miraculous peace.  And then for some reason I decided to kick up some dirt -- go figure.  Anyway, thanks to all who have contributed here and especially to Maddie.  If the point of this thread was to make people think, then I count it a rousing success.

...

...

I guess I still think dicks are a male thing because of the function the dick has in sex; the whole process of enseminating is quintessentially male.  This is not a culturally imposed thing -- it´s objective reality.  Just like pregnancy is a female thing.  I continue to believe in anatomy as the basic marker of manhood and womanhood.  How people fit into that or don´t fit into that is something else, but our anatomy does matter.

1 minute ago, surrogate corpse said:

my main aim here is to make room for the odd, the vast, the beguiling, the wily, the freak 

 

I would say you are succeeding.

@surrogate corpse

If somebody experiences their dick as a powerful symbol of their femininity, well, who am I to say differently?  That seems odd to me but I guess I´ll just add it to the growing list of things I don´t understand about this crazy life.  

27 minutes ago, blue eyed snake said:

But the dichotomy male - female is not true, it is manmade, as there are people who are neither, That's both the intersex people and the trans/nonbinary people. Now that may not be a large group, but many people belong to it.

 

I don´t mean to exclude you, BES, or anybody else's for that matter.  I just want my own understanding of myself to be included in this gender umbrella.  I have a distinct memory as a young adolescent, perhaps around 13, of marveling at my genetalia.  I thought then, and think now, that having a penis is a distinct marker of masculinity.  I liked that.  I don´t want anybody to take that away from me, not even for the sake of including someone else.  Surely there´s room for all of our messy and contradictory human experiences?

10 hours ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

. It is, in fact, a choice to deem the penis "male"

This is, shall we say, a minority opinion.  And it gets at the heart of what many people find disconcerting about what is often called "gender ideology."  I get that it works for you to decouple genetalia from cultural meaning, but I´m a pretty phallocentric guy and the cultural trappings that normatively accompany having a dick work for me.  My dick is very central to my identity as a male. To me, it´s not just a "choice" to call having a dick a male thing.  Using the word "choice" here decontextualizes dick-edness in a way that gets my gruff.  It´s one thing to decide to get rid of your dick because you don´t like it, quite another to impose a particular understanding of what it means, or rather doesn´t mean, to have a dick on the rest of the dick-possessing world.  

3 hours ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

to seek to find simple "biological sex" categories that neatly sort individuals into "biological males" and "biological females" is to impose greater simplicity on the range of human variation than can actually be found. 

Is it?  Seems to me that almost everyone from a very young age can reliably sort people into male and female groupings at sight.  There are some people of indeterminate sex, of course, but the vast majority of folks are born clearly male or female.  I realize that these categories don´t feel comfortable to some people.  Some people avail themselves of medical therapies to successfully change their outward appearance such they appear as a different sex -- and if this make them happier or relieves suffering then more power to them!  But let´s not deny the reality of the categories themselves.  Afterall, if "maleness" or "femaleness" didn´t exist there would be nothing to transition away from.

3 hours ago, Taomeow said:

  I wish I knew what it means.  I have several theories, but no definitive proof of anything...  

I can´t say what an abundance of synchronicities mean either but it strikes me as a very good sign.  An alignment of inner and outer realities such that fluctuations are perceived as a smooth unified force, an edgeless flowing between the conventional you that lives inside your skin and the you that is as big as the universe?

Seems to me that synchronicities are a prerequisite for creating positive change in the world.  Most people try to change things by focusing on something outside of themselves.  This method lacks oomph.  It´s like a beginner at tai chi waving her arms around without an integrous connection through the body.  Another sneakier way is to make the change on the inside and let it ripple out into the world synchronicity style.  This is obviously an advanced method but I reckon it works better, especially for stopping hurricanes. 

Just now, Salvijus said:

 But putting the light where another person is indulging in ego might be a very positive thing. 

 

Like you, I hoped that would be the case.  Alas, no.

4 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

I'm open to all possiblities. I'm just throwing some out there to consider and reflect on. Something inside me thought she would benefit from this introspection. 

People rarely benefit from unsolicited criticism, especially from strangers on the internet.  Consider your own experience. My previous post was mildly critical of you.  Foolishly perhaps, I hoped that you would seriously consider my words and that your introspection would lead you to relate to our online community differently.  Will that happen?  I suppose it´s still possible but I doubt it.

14 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

Because there are people who like what they see in the mirror and have no need to show off. 

"Showing off" is generally seen in a negative light, something that insecure people do to try to get approval and prop up their fragile egos.  So my question to you is: why ya wanna do that?  Why cast aspertions on the character of someone who you presumably don´t know well?  The tendency to do this undermines your claim of coming in peace and goodwill; perhaps this is why many of us initially pegged you as a troll.

A person could just as easily frame Maddie´s selfies in a positive light.  You could say she´s courageous to show us who see is.  You could say that her many selfies are evidence of self-love and a joyful, celebratory spirit.  These hypothesis are at least as likely as your idea that she is "showing off."