Performance piece under construction for National Coming Out Day.
You can view it if you want and even make comments, which may or may not affect the final project. Just don't tell me how to improve my writing, okay? I'm happy with my style. I am not shooting for the recommended list, so I don't need comments about how to get it there.
Of course, there are undoubtedly typos. I am not a touch typist: I am fast but inaccurate. I don't mind if anyone spots them and tells me about it.
I've been posting poetry both in my diaries and at Cheers and Jeers. Decisions about what goes where have not been made yet. Art to be added later.
All aboard!
Act 7: (digital art piece to be determined displays on the wall above me)
I am a human being.
I am a transsexual woman. I call myself a woman because we're only allowed two choices and I have rejected the other one. Six and a half years ago, I began my own personal odyssey in search of personal fulfillment, which happened to include ceasing to live my life in the role of a man. I did what I thought was best for me. I took control of my life. I can't imagine trying to tell anyone else how to live their life, but I encountered a whole bunch of people, people who had never met me, who decided that how I lived my life was very much their concern. And without even talking to me to find out who I was or how I viewed life, many of them summarily declassified me as a human being. I became a thing. I was something to be shunned, an evil that needed to be eradicated, a shameful blotch on the face of humanity. I was the subject of vicious lies. People who were nice to me became the subject of rumors. People looked through me or talked about me like I wasn't even there. I was isolated from any sense of community. Some people thought I should lose my job; it didn't matter to them how good I was at it. One church thought I could be shamed out of town and so orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to the local newspaper. Fortunately, I'm not ashamed of who I am or what I have done. In a land that proclaims freedom of religion, morality doesn't come from just one source, and I've been very true to my moral and ethical standards (Thank you very much!). I'm proud of who I am and what I have done in this life. Humans need to be proud of who they are. And they deserve the right to change, to improve themselves in any way that they deem right for themselves. All people deserve the right to decide just who they are as individuals. That's just a basic part of being human.
<insert poem>
Act 8: (digital art piece to be determined displays on the wall above me)
I am a human being.
I call myself gender-variant. I live on what some people believe is the rigid dividing line between the classes of men and women. From this perspective, sexual orientation becomes rather meaningless. If I were attracted to men, I'd be called a fag. Since I am attracted to women, I'm called a dyke. The truth of the matter is that I'm just different. If someone wants to claim a gender label, then it's fine with me, but I don't see why it is necessary for me to claim a gender, let alone have one thrust upon me. My gender is quite a personal matter and should be of concern only to me and my close friends. At base, we are all just human beings. And I think it is good when human beings love and it is bad when they hate, regardless of who is loved or who is hated. Hating people because of whom they love is insanity. Killing people because of whom they love is the worst kind of blasphemy.
<insert poem>
Act 9: (digital art piece to be determined displays on the wall above me)
I am a human being.
We are all just human beings. We stand at the dawn of a new millennium. Because they are afraid, people are still trying to drag us back into the old one. That time division we passed is just as arbitrary as any other division we humans have made. But the divisions we make of time and space don't affect us as seriously as do the ways we carve up humanity. If we wish this looming time division to have some special meaning, let us dedicate ourselves to removing the boundaries we place between us and around us, so that each individual has the opportunity to reach full potential. It is time for us to start pulling together rather than pulling apart. It is time for us all to be human beings . . . and to start honoring our common humanity.
<insert poem>
I am a Human Being - Acts I-III