Today I'm offering two episodes of Weaving Reality for the price of one. It's what they nowadays call a bogo, I guess.
Except you don't even have to buy one. What kind of a deal is that?
These two pieces were originally named Nebulous answers to Cogent questions and Looking back at the present.
The WeaveMothers were one and several. The collective imagined a HereNow. But the autonomous units were going to do what autonomous units do. The distance between imagination and image on the one hand and reality on the other was immense through the eye of any disinterested observer.
As if there existed such a concept as disinterested observer...
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It started out in the comments to one of my essays. I have rewritten the comments just a bit for the purposes of readability.
so,
1. is there abandonment of the gender identity you, Robyn, had before your surgery?
2. and a full embrace of the gender you had surgery to become?
3. or is there a sense of identity with both genders,
4. or is there an identity awareness of a new, blended gender?
and the reason i mentioned this belonging in your Friday essay was due to the quote pulled from Friday's essay that prompted these questions. you notice, i hope, that i'm finally taking you up on your offer to answer questions, Teach!
- kj
So I respond, with full knowledge that sharing even this much diminishes the probability that venturing inside will happen...
My initial response, which was totally inadequate:
Hmmm.
1. Yes.
2. No.
3. Maybe, but that probably depends on perspective.
4. Politically, yes...socially, it probably depends on time and place. But since so much of my daily existence is often a political act, I'm not always so sure about the SpaceTime dependence.
Each of those answers is highly qualified...dependent upon a lot of definitions having common connotations between us. :-)
Eg. I abandoned the identity I had before the transitioning (a better marker than the surgery). But on the other hand, I am still me. Parts were shed. Parts were added.
I am reminded of a story about a guy who had a hammer. The head had to be replaced twice and the shaft three times, but it's still the same hammer.
--Robyn
I gave kj some short answers. Too short. As I had already said to kj in a previous comment,
Short answer?
There is no short answer.
Isolation can happen in an instant. A slip of the tongue...or the mind...and everyone sits there with me being the one who is different...having to find a way to politely make someone aware of a mistaken word choice. Instantly I become aware that it is in truth impossible to explain something in any way close to how I feel in less than several dozen chapters and that still people who are not gender-variant will not be able to understand what it all means because it is nearly impossible to describe non-feelings. Explain sound to someone born deaf or sight to someone born blind.
How do people change who they are? How do people discover who they really are? How do people pursue their true identity? Is there such a thing as "true identity?"
All very good questions. One arrives at those questions when one starts searching for answers.
I came to a time and a place. The world in which I felt the True I was existing was shrinking. That fact that I could discern a difference between the True I and the External I was disconcerting, to say the least. The fact that I was forced to enter the world of pornography in order to learn about myself was extremely disturbing, not to mention being a real blow to my self-esteem.
I abandoned the identity I had before the transitioning (a better marker than the surgery). But on the other hand, I am still me. Parts were shed. Parts were added.
A comment about a comment: If transition is done well, in my opinion, the surgery itself is just a natural step in the process...for whatever values of "natural" one might wish to apply. The real work of change is mostly done before surgery. And it continues for the rest of one's life. It's called growing.
Transition required letting go of past entanglements in order to escape the maze I had been stuck in for so long. All aspects of my past personality were available to be jetisoned.
As one might imagine, this brings up a huge number of questions about who one has been...and who one desires to be. That's why we have therapists to help guide us in learning about ourselves.
Our (officially, at least one year, but more likely two or more) mission is plainly stated. We must live 24/7 as the target gender during transition. There are, of course, no guides as to what it means to "live as a woman" or "live as a man." So we have to figure that out for ourselves. I figure I spent over half a year being stupid enough to try.
Then I figured it out: I am a woman. If I live as myself, then I am living my life as a woman.
Duh.
So I needed to pursue my own identity. I still do.
Life does not happen in a vacuum however. All this was happening against a backdrop of considerable resistance and not a little hatred. I was, after all, living in Conway, AR at the time. Now it was my choice not to run away to someplace where I was unknown and attempt what might have been a smoother transition (like such a thing truly existed) because there wouldn't have been people who knew me from before. The alternative, in my case, turned out to be that everyone knew enough details about my life and had so many misconceptions about what it means to be a transperson that living as an uncompounded woman was impossible for me. Months were spent defending my right to be who I am. That stretched to years. From time to time, it is still necessary.
Along the way I picked up a mission in life: to improve the lives of people like me, in whatever way "like me" is interpreted.
Unfortunately that mission has been marinated in frustration. I spent several years studying, discussing, deconstructing and reassembling gender with my friends and some of the people who hate us on general principles. I could still be doing that if I chose. But is a neverending process and requires new blood as time passes. And in the end, the problem will still be how one transmits those conclusions to a public who doesn't have that time to spend...or the inclination to do so.
At least not in the last millennium,...and perhaps not in this one.
And we are left with the sound byte story of our lives. I was born in the wrong body? Really? Can someone tell me what that really means and end up with something constructive, something that is not dismissive of my existence and the process I have gone through?
But it is what people expect to hear, whether or not it is meaningless drivel.
The truth is that some of us spend years analyzing gender in order to discover just who we are, while most people are such experts on the subject that they don't even give it a second thought...let alone give us a second chance at life.
I do not embrace "both genders," from my perspective, because the concept of "both genders" is too limiting, too reductionist, in my opinion too damaging to our society. I have my own personal gender, just like everyone else.
And I am too cognitively complex for a sound byte.
From at least one point of view, no discussion of my gender can ultimately prove fruitful until the people participating in that discussion have examined their own conceptualization of the subject. But that requires people who are willing to do that examination. Perhaps even before that, it requires people wanting to participate in the discussion.
It requires people of all genders.
So I keep plucking that thread, hoping the vibration caused will become a standing wave and some year begin such an open dialogue.
The WeaveMother might be pleased. On some happentrack this might provoke progress.
More likely is it the case that I will once again prove inadequate to the task I attempt. There are so many concerns which are ever so much more vital. Who cares about this?
Perhaps in some WhereWhen it could instigate change...but the likelihood is small that it will be this one
Looking Back
Lacking Options
Meaningful discussion
about what it means
for me to be
differently gendered
must clearly begin
by exploring
why you are not
I shall wait
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--May 30, 2008
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The WeaveMother sensed the twang and measured the message. And exuded a fluid from its visual sensory organ.
Communication with any WhereWhen could be so difficult. Trying to communicate with one of the units was unheard of.
Intermission
The WeaveMothers agreed with a request to vibrate a string. They were whole as well as individual.
Maybe the unit would understand.
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Imagine a future. In my future, you would choose a good one, one good for coexistence on this planet as long as we all have to live here.
See if you can act so as to turn reality towards that future. Plan. Create or discover the necessary resources. [Much more has been produced than that in the ensuing 7 years.] Shape a scheme.
Set up the dominos, as many as you can build, and try to find the words that will generate the change you seek. You will undoubtedly fail. Analyze feedback. Loop. Hope for convergence. Better yet, design for it.
[Have I mentioned I once took a class in Optimal Control Theory (feedback control and system stability)? Probably not. Ordinary differential equations. Linear and non-linear systems. And I taught linear programming many times over the years. I believe all knowledge gained is to be used, even for purposes for which it was not initially intended. And everything happens for a reason. Including my education. Even my signing up for that course on a whim.
It dawns on me that this is part of the reason I sometimes have gotten annoyed at lack of feedback. Feedback loops work better when there is more accurate feedback.]
Repeat over and over again, adding to the resources, revising the plans, changing arenas as necessary. Alter the initial conditions somehow. See if I can find the words to to start the dominoes knocking each other over.
Do what I can do. Incite, maybe even inspire, other people to do things which will add to what I can do.
Then do more.
If nothing else, maybe set an example. Inspire someone else to imagine that future, so that maybe it could be kept alive.
I wonder sometimes if anyone will be there to keep this hope alive. And wonder if some day change in the trajectory of reality will be achieved in an amount sufficient to converge to that future.
What else is a human being meant to do?
As the teacher once said,
We seek to fling our students, like peas, into the future.
A better future...and with the hope those students will pull the present towards that future. And with hope that we have had more students than we realize.
Rapidly would be nice. I struggle with impatience sometimes.
Relative Size
Small Moments
I am not John Chapman
But I'd be honored
if some of my words
were the seeds
for someone like him
If history
has taught me anything
it is that
it will not be me
who can spread those words
and the thoughts they express
It takes someone like you
rather than someone like me
All I can do is
interact with you
make a minor adjustment
in those small moments
that make change possible
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--June 6, 2008
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This unit thinks she understands your message. I will attempt to vibrate accordingly.
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This unit thinks she understands your message. I will attempt to vibrate accordingly.
"This may have happened before," vibrated a WeaveMother.
"Or it may not," came a response. "Perhaps that event was this one."
The WeaveMothers pondered.
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In some future WhereWhen happentracks were minutely altered as the locomotive changed direction. The Greataway was vast and held a nearly infinite number of possibilities.
The Listener waited for the Tale to continue. Creation myths had always been a favorite. Co-creation was even more fun, what with reality twisting and all.
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A WeaveMother became aware of the passing of the train. The Greataway was vast indeed, with even enough room for it to converge now and again.
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Millions of intricate moves.
We live in an occupied country, misunderstood;
justice will take us millions of intricate moves.
--William Stafford, from Thinking for Berky
How better could I spend my time?