Transgender Q&A

[Maddie]

14 minutes ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

I would say that the main value of "queer" and the ever-expanding acronym is that it helps separate genuine allies from the impostors who put conditions of Respectability on queer acceptance and liberation.

 

We should make them even more ridiculous, to expose even more impostors.

 

I don't think I understand.

[surrogate corpse]

28 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

If we´re gonna take a big-tent approach, shouldn´t those who value "respectability" be included too?

 

How are they being excluded? By not being allowed to throw their freak brethren to the wolves for table scraps?

 

27 minutes ago, Maddie said:

I don't think I understand.

 

Respectability politics is always a losing compromise. We should not have to accommodate to normie tastes and expectations to be treated with basic dignity.

Edited May 15 by surrogate corpse

[liminal_luke]

10 minutes ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

How are they being excluded? By not being allowed to throw their freak brethren to the wolves for table scraps?

 

 

Some would say that it´s the freak brethren that are throwing the movement to the wolves. 

 

Personally, I favor widening our tolerance toward both extremes of the movement.  Neither the freaks nor those who seek respectability are imposters.  We can have empathy for both groups, however divergent their values.

[surrogate corpse]

3 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

Some would say that it´s the freak brethren that are throwing the movement to the wolves. 

 

People say all kinds of things, what matters is what's true, as our temp-banned friend was reminding us a few pages back. (That wasn't what he was wrong about.)

 

I think there is a fundamentally asymmetry between "we should mutilate ourselves to be appealing to normies so they'll give us crumbs of acceptance" and "I would rather be who I actually am and be hated than be accepted for what I am not".

 

The people who say that the freaks are the barrier to acceptance are evil. I despise them. They are cowards, sell-outs, and traitors. May they fix their black and broken hearts.

[Maddie]

56 minutes ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

How are they being excluded? By not being allowed to throw their freak brethren to the wolves for table scraps?

 

 

Respectability politics is always a losing compromise. We should not have to accommodate to normie tastes and expectations to be treated with basic dignity.

 

Backing up a few steps what I  mean is I don't understand what any of this has to do with the word queer?

[surrogate corpse]

My post was less about "queer" than about the rest of the post. I just used "queer" because Luke did.

 

But it connects in this way: "queer" includes all of us, whatever it is that makes us deviant freaks. It is one struggle. Respectability politics, by contrast, divides us in two: the "good ones" who will sacrifice their brethren for table scraps, and the "bad ones" who won't.

 

In the Haitian slave revolution, the half-black Haitians were not free, but they were put in a privileged position relative to the fully black slaves. When the revolution occurred, they largely sided with the white slaveowners. They were getting scraps; if they fought for justice they might lose even those.

 

Every struggle is like this. Cis gays have gotten their scraps. They deserve so much better, but they also know that it can be so much worse. Just look at how things are for tranny freaks like me. If they get grouped with us, maybe they'll return to being treated like us...

 

If trans people should be so lucky as to get the same scraps as cis gays have gotten, the same will happen to us. We too will fear to lose the too little we've gotten; we too will throw whoever replaces us to the wolves.

 

Fear is a powerful motivator. That's why I keep returning to it. The first principle of morality is: master your fear. Everything else follows.

 

[liminal_luke]

1 hour ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

The people who say that the freaks are the barrier to acceptance are evil. I despise them. They are cowards, sell-outs, and traitors. May they fix their black and broken hearts.

 

No one can say your writing lacks clarity!

[Maddie]

1 hour ago, surrogate corpse said:

My post was less about "queer" than about the rest of the post. I just used "queer" because Luke did.

 

But it connects in this way: "queer" includes all of us, whatever it is that makes us deviant freaks. It is one struggle. Respectability politics, by contrast, divides us in two: the "good ones" who will sacrifice their brethren for table scraps, and the "bad ones" who won't.

 

In the Haitian slave revolution, the half-black Haitians were not free, but they were put in a privileged position relative to the fully black slaves. When the revolution occurred, they largely sided with the white slaveowners. They were getting scraps; if they fought for justice they might lose even those.

 

Every struggle is like this. Cis gays have gotten their scraps. They deserve so much better, but they also know that it can be so much worse. Just look at how things are for tranny freaks like me. If they get grouped with us, maybe they'll return to being treated like us...

 

If trans people should be so lucky as to get the same scraps as cis gays have gotten, the same will happen to us. We too will fear to lose the too little we've gotten; we too will throw whoever replaces us to the wolves.

 

Fear is a powerful motivator. That's why I keep returning to it. The first principle of morality is: master your fear. Everything else follows.

 

 

So kind of like The Blair Whites and the Caitlyn Jenner's? 

[blue eyed snake]

1 hour ago, surrogate corpse said:

My post was less about "queer" than about the rest of the post. I just used "queer" because Luke did.

 

But it connects in this way: "queer" includes all of us, whatever it is that makes us deviant freaks. It is one struggle. Respectability politics, by contrast, divides us in two: the "good ones" who will sacrifice their brethren for table scraps, and the "bad ones" who won't.

 

In the Haitian slave revolution, the half-black Haitians were not free, but they were put in a privileged position relative to the fully black slaves. When the revolution occurred, they largely sided with the white slaveowners. They were getting scraps; if they fought for justice they might lose even those.

 

Every struggle is like this. Cis gays have gotten their scraps. They deserve so much better, but they also know that it can be so much worse. Just look at how things are for tranny freaks like me. If they get grouped with us, maybe they'll return to being treated like us...

 

If trans people should be so lucky as to get the same scraps as cis gays have gotten, the same will happen to us. We too will fear to lose the too little we've gotten; we too will throw whoever replaces us to the wolves.

 

Fear is a powerful motivator. That's why I keep returning to it. The first principle of morality is: master your fear. Everything else follows.

 

 

very well put

 

Quote

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

 

[thelerner]

3 hours ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

People say all kinds of things, what matters is what's true, as our temp-banned friend was reminding us a few pages back. (That wasn't what he was wrong about.)

 

I think there is a fundamentally asymmetry between "we should mutilate ourselves to be appealing to normies so they'll give us crumbs of acceptance" and "I would rather be who I actually am and be hated than be accepted for what I am not".

 

The people who say that the freaks are the barrier to acceptance are evil. I despise them. They are cowards, sell-outs, and traitors. May they fix their black and broken hearts.

I never considered myself bigoted, I had gay friends in highschool but I don't think it was til my 40's and going to Burning Man events that I really got it-  Acceptance and appreciation for colorful, different, eccentric.. following your own beat and being your own person.  

 

For better or worse part of my acceptance is understanding for my brethren who aren't there yet, as long as they do no harm.   

[liminal_luke]

2 hours ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

Fear is a powerful motivator. That's why I keep returning to it. The first principle of morality is: master your fear. Everything else follows.

 

 

3 hours ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

The people who say that the freaks are the barrier to acceptance are evil. I despise them. They are cowards, sell-outs, and traitors. May they fix their black and broken hearts.

 

I have a long way to go towards mastering my fear, so I hope what I´m about to say doesn´t come off as insufferably holier-than-thou. 

 

You may find, as you deepen mastery of your own fear, that your stance towards those "evil" respectability gays begins to soften.  

[Maddie]

Speaking of fear. The individual who is currently in timeout may not have realized it but his arguments against being trans (and yes that's what they were) were very familiar to me because back before I consciously realized I was trans and I was fighting it this is the exact same argument I told myself. Just become enlightened or just become spiritual enough and this problem won't plague you any longer. And I didn't want it to plague me any longer because I was deathly afraid of being this. At least at the time. So my fear took the disguise of spirituality and my spirituality motivated me to further suppress myself, and the suppression cause my mental health to become very bad. But the first Domino was fear and then that led to all kinds of very well reasoned and thought out rationales and I would have never admitted at the time it was fear.

Edited May 15 by Maddie

[Mark Foote]

4 hours ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

Fear is a powerful motivator. That's why I keep returning to it. The first principle of morality is: master your fear. Everything else follows.

 

 

 

While I understand what you're saying (or at least I think I do), I have to believe the mastery is not in head-on confrontation.

I'm working on a post for my own site, and this is the last part of it (so far):

 

Dogen wrote:

 

Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent.

 

("Genjo Koan", tr. Tanahashi)

 

 

Kobun Chino Otogawa provided a practical example:

 

 You know, sometimes zazen gets up and walks around. 

 

(Kobun, S. F. Zen Center lecture, 1980’s)
 

 

Activity of the body solely by virtue of the free location of consciousness can sometimes get up and walk around, without any thought to do so. 

 

Action like that resembles action that takes place through hypnotic suggestion, but unlike action by hypnotic suggestion, action by virtue of the free location of consciousness can turn out to be timely after the fact.  When action accords with future events in an uncanny manner, the source of the action may well be described as “the inconceivable”.

 

I have found that zazen is more likely to “get up and walk around” when activity by virtue of the free location of consciousness is accompanied by an active extension of compassion, an extension beyond the boundaries of the senses.
 

 

There is also a sermon wherein Gautama described what he learned about dealing with fear in the forest.  He says he learned to continue in the carriage or posture he was in until he overcame the fear--if he was walking, he continued to walk, if he was standing, he continued to stand, and so forth.  

 

Amazing how I found "sink" the other day, when the neighbor's German Shepard got out and was growling behind me as I walked down the street!  How could I not extend compassion to the Shepard, knowing his owner had given the dog a junkyard life since he was a pup.  Harder for me to have compassion for that owner, although I suspect he too was given a junkyard life.

 

Lot of junkyard lives around, we all have junkyard lives in one respect or another. 

Edited May 15 by Mark Foote

[surrogate corpse]

17 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

You may find, as you deepen mastery of your own fear, that your stance towards those "evil" respectability gays begins to soften.  

 

Maybe. I'm not a diviner; I leave the future to sort itself.

 

All I know is that thus far, the more I have abandoned my fear, the angrier I have gotten at the moral mediocrity that drives respectability politics.

 

The less afraid I become of suffering—if suffering should be the consequence of my doing what I think right—the less I respect people who would rather be comfortable than good.

 

I always understand them, in the right context I'll even be nice and patient with them. But I hope I will never be so stupid as to trust them.

[surrogate corpse]

17 hours ago, Maddie said:

So my fear took the disguise of spirituality and my spirituality motivated me to further suppress myself, and the suppression cause my mental health to become very bad. But the first Domino was fear and then that led to all kinds of very well reasoned and thought out rationales and I would have never admitted at the time it was fear.

 

Yes! Fear is a proteus. Or better: a zombie fungus. It takes over and perverts everything good in you to its own ends.

[surrogate corpse]

15 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

While I understand what you're saying (or at least I think I do), I have to believe the mastery is not in head-on confrontation.

 

Depends what counts as "head-on confrontation". My experience of letting go of fear has a pretty standard form:

 

1. Fear appears as something more respectable, as reason, as desire, and traps me

2. I come to see behind the mask: no, that was not reason, that was not desire, that was fear

3. Seeing fear for fear, it loses its grip on me: I acknowledge it as fear and respond to it as fear. I tell the fear that I am going to do the thing it fears, but promise to take care of myself in doing so.

4. I face, not the fear, but the object of fear (divorce, transition, whatever). And, in facing it, I take care of myself.

5. Iterating this process, I come to trust myself more, and my fears come to present themselves more and more honestly.

 

It is, really, like a scooby-doo episode: the same formula, the same mask-off reveal every time...

[Maddie]

35 minutes ago, surrogate corpse said:

 

Depends what counts as "head-on confrontation". My experience of letting go of fear has a pretty standard form:

 

1. Fear appears as something more respectable, as reason, as desire, and traps me

 

 

I've seen this in my own life and with many of the people that want to have "reasonable discussions" with me lol. 

[silent thunder]

@surrogate corpse

Your recent sharings regarding the acceptance and rejection of the 'overt/accepted/cis culture' and subsequent villification that takes place within each of the sub groups that lay within its reach of impedence and control... resonate deeply.  Thank you for sharing and I appreciate your word choice and tone a lot.  Throughout my life I've witnessed the villification... You're not gay enough, You're not black enough, You're too gay, You're too ______...

 

The steadfast refusal of compliance and acquiessence among the 'unaccepted' of whatever sub group (be it race, gender id, sexual attraction or curiosity of aspects of psyche outside traditional dogma) has always resonated as home for me, even as a cisgender white straight male in a cis/straight/patriarchy.

 

Your recent sharings brought this image to my mind pond again.

 

Very Auspicious for me... *deep bow*  Thank you for sharing, your sharing brought a deeply impacting synchronicity for me this morning.

[liminal_luke]

As human beings, we find ourselves at a difficult moment.  Fearing that the apocalypse is nigh, many young people choose not to have babies or, in many cases, have sex at all. Why bring another life into a world of pandemics, war, and imminent environmental collapse?  Why foist unnecessary suffering on a future generation? Too many of us are anxious and lonely and sad.  

 

In part, I think our present malaise is due to the breakdown of social norms.  Many of the things I hate -- compulsory church attendence, heteronormativity, Superbowl Sunday -- nevertheless contribute to a certain kind of cohesion that binds people together in community.  Consider gay marriage.  I´m gay and love the fact that I can now marry my partner. Gay marriage: love it!  But I can´t pretend that this kind of progress comes without a price; life was simpler when we could all just assume that woman and men married and any other kind of relationship was a freakish aberration.  The same is true for trans rights.  Life is simpler when we can assume that people born with penises are male, period.  Don´t get me wrong.  I´m glad that we live in a world with gay marriage, in a world where trans people can increasingly be their authentic selves without judgement.  Still, we pay a price.  These social advances have given us both freedom and anxiety; not one or the other, but both.  

 

For this reason, I have empathy for the rigid, controlling people who think I should watch football, drink beer, and get a girlfriend.  They instinctively know we are tied together in an energetic web and the choices I make effect the world they live in.  My choice to be a freak makes their world just a little more freakish.  I recently read a restaurant dresscode policy that beautifully made the point: how one patron chooses to dress effects the experience of other patrons.  

 

Outrage is not a nuanced position.  Outrage is born of the lie that says my way of seeing something is all good and the viewpoint of those who oppose me all bad.  I believe there´s a place for outrage -- I´m glad it´s in my emotional toolbox -- but I wouldn´t want to get stuck there.  Outrage is it´s own kind of rigidity, a defensive bulwark against ambiguity. On the flip side of the false fire of angry self-assurance one often finds fear.

Edited May 16 by liminal_luke

[surrogate corpse]

Thank you, @silent thunder. I'm glad my words resonated.

 

@liminal_luke -- You've put your finger right on it: the desire to make life simpler. The actual world is complex. This frightens us. So we construct simple false models of the world ("men are attracted to women, and women to men"; "everyone born with a penis is a man"). But the world cannot be made simple. It falsifies our models. So we torture, maim, mutilate, exile, kill everything that falls outside our comforting falsehoods.

 

What appeals to me about Daoism—at least, Zhuangzi's Daoism—is its dogged commitment to responding to the world as it is. Zhuangzi asks for the whole world, because he knows: to ask for less is monstrous.

[Maddie]

1 hour ago, surrogate corpse said:

Thank you, @silent thunder. I'm glad my words resonated.

 

@liminal_luke -- You've put your finger right on it: the desire to make life simpler. The actual world is complex. This frightens us. So we construct simple false models of the world ("men are attracted to women, and women to men"; "everyone born with a penis is a man"). But the world cannot be made simple. It falsifies our models. So we torture, maim, mutilate, exile, kill everything that falls outside our comforting falsehoods.

 

What appeals to me about Daoism—at least, Zhuangzi's Daoism—is its dogged commitment to responding to the world as it is. Zhuangzi asks for the whole world, because he knows: to ask for less is monstrous.

 

I know very little of Lao Zu's Daoism as it is, but how is Zhuangzi's Daoism different? 

 

As humans we really want our labels for things to fit. We tend to really not like it when they don't. The Dao that can be named isn't the eternal Dao. 

[liminal_luke]

1 hour ago, surrogate corpse said:

 Zhuangzi asks for the whole world, because he knows: to ask for less is monstrous.

 

You make a wonderful point, surrogate corpse, about asking for the whole world, in all of it´s complexity.  I´m not saying you´re wrong.  I would only say that asking for less isn´t so much monstrous as human.  

Edited May 16 by liminal_luke

[Maddie]

2 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

 Consider gay marriage.  I´m gay and love the fact that I can now marry my partner. Gay marriage: love it!  But I can´t pretend that this kind of progress comes without a price; life was simpler when we could all just assume that woman and men married and any other kind of relationship was a freakish aberration. 

 

We tend to prefer what is familiar over what is good. 

[Mark Foote]

2 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

These social advances have given us both freedom and anxiety; not one or the other, but both.  
 

 

There's a sermon somewhere in the Pali Canon where some dignitary visits the place where a group of monks are residing, and comments that they are like wild animals, in that they respond to their environment more readily than the average person.

 

Sometimes I think the wild animals I meet respond to my mind, before I do anything overtly.  Just the presence of my consciousness with them is enough to set them in motion, or so it seems!

From the post I'm writing:

 

I sit down first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and I look to experience the activity of the body solely by virtue of the free location of consciousness.

 

The practice of the wild animals, IMHO. 

I take that to have been the daily practice of the Gautamid, not the cessation of volition in feeling and perceiving associated with his enlightenment, but the cessation of habit and volition in the activity of the body in inbreathing and outbreathing.  Set it up, come back to it as necessary.

Maybe someday, I will move because someone was conscious of me, without knowing why.

 

Edited May 16 by Mark Foote

[surrogate corpse]

2 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

You make a wonderful point, surrogate corpse, about asking for the whole world, in all of it´s complexity.  I´m not saying you´re wrong.  I would only say that asking for less isn´t so much monstrous as human.  

 

It is both.

 

I get the sense you are concerned that, in calling "monstrous" what is monstrous, I am failing to see that it is human, and so failing to give it the sympathy that is due all humans. Not so. My sympathy is unbounded. (This is aspirational. I have my failings, my own entanglements, my own monstrousness.) Nothing less than the total liberation of all sentient beings will do. Suffering is to be removed because it is suffering, that's all. But when our all-too-human fear of suffering makes us monstrous to others (and ourselves, always also ourselves), I will call it "monstrous".

 

The unfortunate fact is that so much of what is human is also monstrous.