Eredien's Journal

Therapy & Mental Health: yesterday, my therapist and I both agreed that I am pretty much done with therapy for right now. I feel happier and way more confident in my life and have mechanisms in place to deal with the bad stuff. It doesn't seem like I was in therapy for more than three years, but it's a different kind of work than I was thinking it was when I went into it, so the time-dilation makes a little bit of sense to me. I am really proud. I still have problems (see below) but I can deal with them in a reasonable manner. I am still taking meds for PCOS and bipolar disorder, which seem to be working really, extraordinarily well.

Home life: my parents are transphobes, my mother explicitly told me that she wants me to settle down with a man or a 'real woman'. Going to have a talk about this with my mother. On other hand, mother does not have cancer again, so that's good.

Creativity: I have gone into my winter creativity phase, which mostly means writing poetry, reading long involved novels, drawing, and sewing (as opposed to my summer phase, which is writing longer works of fiction, reading short stories, gardening, and website design). I am really happy with where I am at in my sewing; it looks more professional every day. Also when I move back to the Boston area I am planning on trying to do my maskmaking/puppeteering internship again.

Fitness/body image: this is slowly progressing. I am going to a weekly meeting that is helping. I have decided that I would rather lose weight and see what that does to my breasts and shape than get top surgery; I don't think I want it anymore and I figure if I do later the procedure will still be there.

Work: I got promoted from intern to part-timer, which means more responsibility and not being paid under the table. Yay for daily structure.

Relationships & Friendships: Long distance relationships with my friends and partners still suck, but I have kind of gotten used to it. I try to see people when I can, which also involves being able to say 'I can't see this person right now' when I can't. My life is much better for the way I now manage relationships that are important to me instead of letting my relationships manage my moods. I had a fantastic minivacation where I got to see A., B., and E. this past weekend and managed to break through some of my remaining psychosexual fears in a big way, which was incredibly rewarding. Things with R and R' are slowly, slowly coming back to a level of friendship I haven't felt from them in years, which is also fantastic. The support of I. through all this has been steadfast not to mention hilarious. I feel really amazed and grateful to have such incredible people in my life.

Food: the biggest change in my life this year has been my deciding two things: I can be veg* at home if I'm not vocal about it--no one will miss me eating cheese or meat if I don't make a big deal out of it--and that I want to start fishing. I went fishing this summer and really found it incredibly relaxing, though I caught close to nothing. I've decided that I will eat what I catch if I can, which is consistent with my overall food philosophy of taking personal responsibility for the things I eat and trying to grow or kill as much of it myself as possible. Next possible food project: keeping rescue chickens?

Moving plans: progressing apace with my bank account (did I mention I'm grateful for my job)? I may move to Boston and commute to Western MA to see B., I may move to Western MA with B. and commute to the semi-Boston area to see A. Still looking for Boston jobs, especially in editing or writing. Really where I live depends on what kind of job I get and what my plans with B. solidify into. We are thinking of getting some kind of cohousing--a shared duplex, or possibly nearby apartments.

Travel: Belgium in 2015 with A. I also actually have a price on my dream trip to Russia/Mongolia/China/Japan and am saving up for that.

Religion/God: I am impressed with the new pope even though I currently consider myself agnostic. I went to Jewish services for the first time last week and really enjoyed all the singing and debate of theology even though I don't believe in the efficacy of prayer as such. Chi work both with and without my partners is going well. Saving up for martial arts again even though my mother considers them unwomanly (another thing to talk with her about).
This entry was originally posted at http://eredien.dreamwidth.org/2405.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

My grandfather and grandmother moved from their home in FL last year into an assisted-living facility, when my grandfather's Alzheimers' finally got too much for my grandmother to deal with on their own.

That means that we get mail for them here, at our home, and usually bring it up to my grandmother at her current home, a long-term nursing unit where she lays slowly slipping into decline; my grandfather died in May at the age of 96. I visit her as often as I can, and sit with her as she struggles to breathe.

I won't be bringing her the letter from the FL Focus on the Family affiliate we got today, urging her to vote for Romney as "the candidate who shares your values": Florida Family Action and Citizen Link may think that my grandmother is a bigot, but she loves her queer granddaughter. And I love her.

A few years ago, while living in Boston, I met a wonderful person who cared for me and whom I cared for very much, and came out to my parents after almost a decade of being in the closet. My parents, who had previously seemed neutral on LGBT rights in general and quite supportive of other queer family members, told me I was wrong and should never get married. I was crushed.

They told me never to tell my grandparents: "you'd kill them." I'd been forming a close relationship with my grandparents--the kind I'd never been able to have with them as a child, since they lived so far away and we saw them so rarely--via letter. Rather than elide my partner and my life with them from my letters, I simply stopped writing to them. They were hurting, and I was hurting.

I wrote to them anyway. I told them I was queer. I told them I wasn't supposed to tell them. I told them I was angry at my parents and that I didn't have the family support I had hoped for. I told them that I loved them whatever their response was. I told them that if we were to stop talking to each other, we should at least know why. I told them I was terrified. I sent the letter, and I waited.

My grandmother wrote this letter back.
It's gotten me through the really bad times--the subsequent three-year battle for respect for my relationship from my parents, the loss of a job, my untreated clinical depression, my breakup with my partner mentioned in the letter, my move back to my hometown, my grandfather's death this May and my grandmother's subsequent decline, and the guy today who sat next to me in a government office and called me a carpet muncher to see if he could gay-bait me (it didn't work).

I am really glad that my then-partner, and my current partner, got a chance to meet my grandparents. I am glad to be their granddaughter. I am glad to be their queer granddaughter. And my grandmother is glad to have me, just as I am. I remember that when I'm tempted to give up on love, or frustrated with the daily, exhausting work of being an out queer person, and it makes my life a lot better every day.

I wrote to Florida Family Action, CitizenLink, and Focus on the Family, and asked them to take my grandmother off their mailing list.

She doesn't want your letter. She loves me.

If you are a queer person or an ally, and have received a similar election-year flyer, I ask you to do just two things:

- Write to the group that sent you the flyer, and its affiliates, and ask them to take you off their mailing lists. You have the power to stop their bigoted, ill-informed fears from coming into your mailbox and your home. Stand up and tell them you don't want any part of it.

- If you have a similar story or letter, please write about it. Talk about the hope that gets you through. Be honest with your family, whether they're blood or chosen.

Let them love you as you are and it might save your life. I know my grandma's letter saved mine.

This is required reading for pretty much anyone who's having sex and/or voting in America.

From an article about a presidental straw poll at the recent Values Voters Summit:

Abortion was the leading determinant, followed by government spending, repeal of healthcare reform, protection of religious liberty and national security.

In a speech earlier Saturday, Gingrich outlined what he described as the two greatest threats to the nation: a "social secular machine" and radical Islamic extremism.

I find these these events, and the articles about them, interesting not so much for tracking what values they people who attend these events espouse, but because the people at these events are often in a position to use terms describing said values. You see a lot of newer coinages--words known in back rooms and in the halls of congress, but not on the street--brought into the public sphere for the first time during events like this.

Look at "social secular machine." That's going to take off on CNN soon, if it hasn't already. The GOP has talked a lot in the past few decades about what constitutes a social unit, what should constitute a social unit, the decay in the social unit, etc. But here, the idea of being "social" is becoming tainted through association with that bad-boy adjective, "secular," and the vaguely uncomfortable connotations of "machine." (Not to mention "socialism." It wasn't explicitly mentioned in Gingrich's threat-list, but the echoes are contained in the roots of the word themselves, and if people weren't talking about socialism as evil at the Values Voters Summit I'll eat my hat). There's no recognition that people are the ones who possess the quality of secular-ness; there's just this idea that groups of secular people are a machine. The word "machine" conjures up a lot of images--ants, production lines, shiny metal rivets--but none of the connotations of the word "machine" are particularly human, or particularly friendly. After all, humans create machines to do the work that they, as humans, don't want to do. So, as far as I can tell, the first danger is "groups of people who don't have a religion."

The second group of people, radical Islamic extremists, seems more forthright, but since this country can't decide what, exactly, constitutes radical Islamic extremism as opposed to normal Muslim belief or practice, in the meantime there's a panic about everybody who's Muslim. Nobody is paying much attention to the people who say, "I'm not a radical Muslim," except for the the people whose job it is to discuss the idea that those moderates may not be telling the truth. So, as far as I can tell, the second danger is "pretty much all Muslims, at least until we can figure out what our definition of radical is, which hasn't happened in the last decade."

Where does this leave us? We have "Christians," "Jews," and "other religions that are too small to matter to us in terms of votes and/or that have not yet committed acts of terrorism against America and hence come to our attention."

I don't understand how this same Values Voters Summit made "protecting religious liberty" a priority...

...Oh, wait. That's totally code for "we can't say 'oppose the homosexual agenda' anymore, because we have a few gay friends now, so we've started saying that our religion is attacked whenever those gay friends want to do something our religion tells us it's wrong for them to do."

That's what's been happening in the news and in the point/counterpoint columns we've been seeing for the past few years: once the cultural window shifted from "doing this is objectively gross" to "doing this is subjectively gross," the people who subscribe to that particular brand of subjectivity as part of their cultural identities gradually shifted to arguing for that cultural identity's right to retain that subjective assessment of grossness.

Here's the thing: I agree that people who subscribe to that particular brand of subjectivity as part of their cultural identities should have the right to retain that cultural identity's subjective assessment of grossness, even if I vehemently disagree with their particular cultural identity's assessment of grossness.

However, I do not think that the assumption of a cultural identity should shield the people who assume that identity from criticism of that identity's subjective assessment of grossness, or from criticism of that identity as a whole in terms of the policies and ideas it spreads as a group.

I also think that one religious cultural identity's subjective assessment of grossness should not take precedent over:
- all other religious or secular cultural identities' subjective assessments of grossness
- any other religion's cultural identity's subjective assessments of grossness
- any other secular cultural identity's subjective assessments of grossness

In America, separation of civil and religious law should ensure that:
- there are a multiplicity of secular cultural identities and their subjective assessments of grossness
- there are a multiplicity of religious cultural identities and their subjective assessments of grossness

However, this is not currently happening. Instead, we are being told that one (or maybe two?) historically and emotionally important and widespread religious cultural identities' subjective assessments of grossness (the Christian right's assessment, or possibly the "Judeochristian" right's assessment) should take precedent over all and any other secular and religious cultural identities' subjective assessments of grossness--because that one religious cultural identity is historically and emotionally important and widespread.

The members of that one historically and emotionally important and widespread cultural identity feel free to tell the members of all other religious and secular cultural identities that:
- their religious or secular cultural identities' subjective assessments of grossness are wrong
- their religious or secular cultural identities have no or harmful values in terms of the policies and ideas they spread as a group
- that particular religious cultural identity's subjective assessments of grossness should be given primacy over all other religious and secular cultural identities.

And the members of all those other religious and secular cultural identities would feel free to refute those ideas.

If that was what was actually happening, we would be having a debate on somewhat more equal footing. The historically and emotionally important and widespread cultural identity of Christianity would still have more of a foothold because of its historical roots and its widespread adoption, but that problem is at least a known bug.

But that's not all that's happening.

What is actually happening? If members of any other religious and/or secular cultural identities object to the cultural primacy of one religious cultural identity, they are told that because the people in question also have a right to their religious cultural identity and its subjective assessment of grossness (which is true). But they are also told that people with any other cultural identities, religious and/or secular, have no right to question:
- that religious cultural identity's subjective assessment of grossness
- the religious cultural identity's value as a whole in terms of the policies and ideas it spreads as a group
- the primacy of that particular religious cultural identity's subjective assessments of grossness over all other religious and secular cultural identity's subjective assessments of grossness.

That is untrue.

And that one religious cultural identity? It's already got power, enshrined in politics, law and culture, and is doing its best to ignore or defame all other religious or secular cultural identities in those arenas in order to retain its primacy and keep the other cultural identities from not only obtaining primacy, but from obtaining much power at all.

So we have Unitarians (for instance, among other religious cultural identity groups) unable to religiously marry (a religious cultural action) religious queer people (a religious cultural identity group), due to the political power of the primary religious cultural identity group.

We have judges (a secular cultural identity group) unable to civilly marry (a secular cultural action) atheist queer people (a secular cultural identity group), due to the political power of the primary religious cultural identity group.

We have Christians (the primary religious cultural identity group in the US) using their political power and cultural primacy to ~successfully argue that it is unfair that queer people are able to question their religious cultural identity's subjective assessment of grossness, their religious cultural identity's value as a whole in terms of the policies and ideas it spreads as a group, and the primacy of their particular religious cultural identity's subjective assessments of grossness over all others.

Yet what does the Christian right do when arguing for the retention of their cultural primacy and political power in secular American law? They question queer people's subjective assessment of grossness, queer people's secular cultural identity as a whole in terms of the policies and ideas they spread as a group, and try to argue that queer folks' particular secular cultural identity's subjective assessment of grossness has primacy over their own understanding (at the same time, they use language that implies that their own subjective assessment of grossness is still, and still should be, the most powerful).

Do I think that people in America have freedom of speech, such that the people with the culturally dominant religious subjective assessment of grossness may insinuate that I am a danger to children, and religion, and a menace to society, in their TV ads? Yes, but I should also have freedom of speech, such that I can shout about their lies.
I have this right as a queer person in this day and age and location, but I am consistently told, in words and in actions, that it is unsafe to shout too loudly, and I am constantly reminded that I just got the ability to speak.

Do I think that people in America have freedom of religion, such that the people with the culturally dominant religious subjective assessment of grossness may refuse to marry me to the person I love in a particular place of worship with a particular policy of believing that I am a sinner? Yes, but if I am religious, I should also have the freedom of religion such that I can go to another place of worship with a particular policy of believing that I am not a sinner, and they should be able to marry me to the person I love.
I do not have this right as a queer person, in this day and age and location, because the people with the culturally dominant religious subjective assessment of grossness have successfully used their power to defend their position that I should not be able to marry the person I love in a religious ceremony.

Do I think that people in America have freedom of religion, such that the people with the culturally dominant religious subjective assessment of grossness may refuse to marry me to the person I love in a particular place of worship with a particular policy of believing that I am a sinner? Yes, but if I am not religious, I should also have freedom of religion such that I can go to a place where civil marriages are performed, and they should be able to marry me to the person I love.
I do not have this right as a queer person, in this day and age and location, because the people with the culturally dominant religious subjective assessment of grossness have successfully used their power to defend their position that I should not be able to marry the person I love in a non-religious ceremony.

This is the most ridiculous, and dangerous, definition of "protection of religious liberty" I've ever seen.

And it's already becoming a buzzword, a shorthand.

Watch for it, and defend against it wherever you see it.

I was reading rm's journal earlier today, and started thinking about something she wrote in this post. I was going to post the following as a comment in her journal, but it wouldn't fit in a comment no matter how I edited it, and I realized it would make a good standalone post. So, I thought I would post it here and also leave a link to this in her journal comments.

I am leaving comments open, but be nice to each other. I left comments open because I am hoping that people will have interesting things to say about geology and critical literary theory in relation to metaphors and language phrases as they are used in modern politics. I have no emotional energy to moderate a debate right now, and even if I had the emotional energy, I have other things to do. If you are nasty, you are going to get banned. Thank you.
--

rm wrote:
"Ground Zero" has been, since the beginning, a useful term to frame, not just what happened at the WTC as an act or war, but to frame this idea of ourselves ("The West") being at war with Islam (which we shouldn't be, and is what the terrorists are trying, successfully apparently, to trick us into), and that's not a type of useful I can support.

That made me realize something new about how language is used to empower those already in power. The idea of "Ground Zero" implies some kind of origin point--a ground--and some kind of spreading out from that origin point--if there's a zero, that implies a one, two, and three, and on. But there's no Ground 1 or 2; there's just this empty origin. Ground Zeroes happen all over the world, every day--but how many of those get named? And of those, how many get named as the central point from which everything came, but in which there is emptiness?

Just one, and it's in one of the largest, richest, most important cities in the Global North (I'm trying to ditch the concept of "The West" in order to use the different concept of "The Global North," after having read Stuffed and Starved). An incredibly privileged act: name our wounds, and name them as first--to name them as the origin of pain.

So now there's this literally empty signifier of zero, as blasted origin. Origin implies that something is supposed to be spreading out; but no one knows what is "spreading" or where it is going. But people always pour things into empty spaces; human beings are always compelled to construct meanings out of trauma.

Something foreign, unknown, terrifying, is spreading from a single point, a wound, in the Global North, and no one knows what it is...
Mosques are foreign, unknown, terrifying, and "they" want to build one on the point, the wound.
Oh my God! The terrifying spreading thing must be Islam! It must be Plan51 Park 51!
It must be...the Ground Zero Mosque! (With that one added word, appended, the empty lingustic place gets literally filled with the idea of a literal building, and one which encompasses all of the Global North's fear of The Other at that. See it?)

If you look at the op-eds, the articles, the texts of the debate, it's clear many people assume something "spread" out from a defined, empty "ground" "zero" into other grounds nearby. Those areas were never defined, named, (as the "zero" point was, had to be), so there is no structure for people to talk about anything except the "zero" point as being sacred ground. All the "correct radius in blocks" talk is actually a barely-understood struggle to retroactively name and define a "ground 1" or "2." We are having this debate--"should we define those areas? Why wouldn't we? What spread out? How far did it go?"--without recognizing that we are claiming sacred ground, and without understanding why: all because the word zero, which we have heard so much, implies that there must be a one and a two. The lack of same makes people subconsciously uneasy: zeroes need to be followed by ones; order makes sense of things that make no sense. We are trying to build order, but we appear to be unaware, or unconcerned, that we ourselves are laying foundations in the dark.

After earthquakes, geologists talk about the epicenter--the stress point, the origin--of the quake. But they also talk about aftershock areas, and zones of destruction, and seismic shadowing, wherein the ripples from one earthquake reverberate through the earth's core and are felt in the place opposite from the epicenter, on the other side of the planet. After a quake, you hear about seismic shadowing, and you suddenly understand why you have been hearing so much about tsunamis in Japan.
But saying the words "Ground Zero" invokes the idea of epicenter without mentioning the quake. As our house falls to pieces around us, we cannot know why unless we talk about the earthquake. As we count the dead that are our seismic shadow, we cannot have any understanding of why people fight halfway around the world unless we talk about the earthquake.

And we keep invoking the epicenter as the reason for the quake.
I wish they would get a geologist to advise the White House.

A serious question: would the Plan51 Park 51 project would have generated as much opposition if it did not have a number in its name? (Yes, the proposed center is/was also called the Cordoba Mosque Project, but that name people had to research, and people are presenting the meaning(s) of it in articles, and other people are debating those meanings. No one is debating "Plan51," "Park 51" which to my ear sounds almost generic--no, rather, it sounds like it was designed to sound almost generic, like the name of an upscale bar/bistro. "Ground Zero" also sounds almost generic, too.

There's some kind of seismic shadowing in people's minds, in the language; there must be.

Had a lovely dinner last night with baaaaaaaaaah and meanfreepath. It was great to see S. again and catch up with her; it turns out that meanfreepath lives literally a block away and we are going to get together and play games.

I am currently in the process of making major life changes. Something that I suspect will be big and important, and sucks really hard, hit me upside the head about 20 minutes ago; no, I'm not ready to talk about it yet, if at all.

That's on top of trying to deal with religion. I don't know if I'm going to be living in the Boston area in the next few years--it depends on if rax decides to go for a PhD around here or not--but I've decided that it's time to move on from being a queer who's scared to be Christian, just like I moved on from being a Christian who's scared to be queer. I need to deal with the lack of a faith community in my life, and there's one easy way that I can do that: get my ass to a faith community. There's two churches I've been to in the area which I liked:

First Church Somerville UCC - I felt comfortable here the few times I went. That might be a problem, as I think that too much comfortability can be a drawback in a church (comfortability is good; too much is bad, IMO). A lot of the population of this church seemed white and in their mid-20's to mid-50's when I went in the summer, though when I went for Advent last winter there were some more older people in greater evidence. They sent me a mug. Their main pastor is a woman, which is cool. Stuff I find problematic:
- I like their stance on gay rights, can't help but like it, but it's inherently political to fly a rainbow flag outside of a church. It's also inherently religious (at least in the USA). It's also my cause. But places of worship which play overt politics games bother me. (I'm well-aware that individual places of worship in specific, and organized religion in general, both play internal and external and overt and covert and intra-faith and intra-denominational politics games, and have for centuries; they're institutions run by people. Thanks.) Should faith inform political stances for people of faith? Yes--in fact, I think it would be dishonest not to have faith inform a political stance for people of faith. Should people of faith speak up about injustice and combat it where they see it? Yes. So why am I still so conflicted about a church making an overt inherently political statement, especially as it's in support of a cause I agree with and which my life is part of, and one which I think people need to be overt about? Probably becauase integrating faith and sexuality is hard in any case, and I personally am still angry at my faith for making my sexuality harder and my sexuality for making my faith harder. (But I have determined that whining about that is not helping either cause, so I am going to try to do something to strengthen my faith which will also strengthen the rest of my life, incl. sexuality).
- The UCC is a non-creedal church: there is nothing you have to believe in order to belong. Somewhat discouraging. I can not believe something at home and be able to sleep in. Why bother showing up if I don't have to believe anything?

St. James' Episcopalian Church - welcoming; I have friends I know who go there and are involved in church life & committees there (younger people involved in church life--always a good sign). Diverse in terms of race and age with a healthy mix of college students, families, old people, etc. Gorgeous building. Moravian star over baptismal font, which is kind of awesome. Seems to do interesting missionary work, though I want to research more into what it is they are actually doing and where they are going. Does not make me feel as comfortable as UCC though I think perhaps that is a good thing. Stuff I find problematic:
- I don't beieve in saints; sermons taking place on 'St. X's day' make my very protestant-tradition-steeped heart nervous. There are good people and were good people who are Christian and did some amazing stuff, but I don't want to pray to them. More research needs to be done in terms of theology impacting practice.
- Worried about hierarchial relationship structure of Episcopalian church.
- Episcopalian church in US currently going through protracted and sometimes nasty theological debate surrounding gay people in life of church, ordination for gays, gay marriage, etc., with possible schism in the near future. Don't really want to be a poster child, and don't want to join a church only to be told I can't get married in it.

Thoughts welcome, esp. from local folks and/or folks involved in churches.

An lj friend of mine recently asked queer folks what they thought of forcibly outing queer politicans who were publicly anti-gay. Were they victims of societal homophobia? Was it their just desserts? Or something else?

I was going to answer there but it turned into a post of its own. This is long, and it's as much a personal meditation on religion as a public question of politics, so I put it behind a cut-tag.

( Read more... )