Not coping

There now follows a self-pitying whinge on behalf of me.

A kind friend sent me money so I could sign up to support Jeremy Corbyn, but we need food and electricity more, so the deadline passed and I didn't sign up. And now I hear he's let us down on an important vote, and I'm just waiting to be told he's been working for Murdoch all this time. Even if he isn't, it's entirely possible, as someone was kind enough to explain to me, that the 120,000 people who joined Labour after he was elected leader were only joining to throw him out, because people really want an opposition that agrees with the ruling party ninety per cent of the time, and the idea of a government that supports and represents the ordinary people, the desperately in need, the marginalised and the oppressed, really revolts them. So he'll lose the vote, and we'll be back to a one-party, all Tory all the time state, and May will start another stupid war because Saint Tony said wars make prime ministers popular and let's face it nothing else she does is ever going to do that. And now we've agreed to spend all that money on Trident it'd be a shame not to use it, wouldn't it?

And over in America, the Hillary supporters will all relax and not bother because she's got it in the bag, and the millions of people who don't like her will all stay home or vote for Ernie Dinkelfwat or Bugs Bunny or someone, and everyone will be SO FUCKING SURPRISED when Trump gets elected and the whole fucking world goes to hell. One of the strongest, brightest, most determined people I know is finding it hard not to despair, so how the fuck am I supposed to do it? I'm not strong. I've been being a stupid weak man for sixty years. I never got to develop the strength I should have had if I'd been able to be my proper gender all this time. My growth got stunted. I can't make up for decades of spiritual malformation in a few weeks.

And--tiny, trivial, perfectly innocent and harmless--I just got through explaining how important it is to me that I be able to express my gender through the conventions we have now, and someone explains to me that they were different in the seventeenth century. Um, yes, know that actually. And right now I'm trying hard not to cry because I can't even explain MYSELF properly, and there's so much that needs saying and either I'm talking Martian or nobody's listening, and the world's going to hell and I can't stop it and I do not want to live in the world we're going to have and I don't know if I even can.

I've got to go to bed. I hope I'll sleep. I hope I'll feel stronger in the morning. I hope there will be better news.

This has been a self-pitying whinge on behalf of me. Sorry, and if you read it, thank you for your patience.

Was I oppressed?

Binge-reading Assigned Male is very good for focusing on transy stuff...

Was I oppressed by cisnormativity when I was a kid? No, I don't think so. Neither my parents nor I had the slightest idea that anything was amiss. I had good days and bad days. I didn't even have the vocabulary to frame the concepts I would have needed to recognise oppression. I didn't have unquenchable longings to wear my mum's dresses (well, our colour senses were totally different...). When my height got me the lead role in "Santa Claus Gets Busy" at primary school, I don't remember an overwhelming sadness at not being able to play a fairy instead (though I do remember liking their costumes).

I do know that you don't have to be aware of oppression to be oppressed...but I also feel that for there to be active oppression there must be an active oppressor. Passive oppression is just like this weather; nobody is doing it, nobody is willing it, quite possibly nobody is even aware it's happening. There were no villains in my young life, no sneering patriarchs wielding the whip. The kyriarchy was there, as it had been for thousands of years, and it was actively oppressing people outside my awareness, in other places, but me, no. Which, of course, is also a measure of my privilege.

I think there's been a sea-change since then. I think that now it's no longer easy for anyone to pretend that the kyriarchy doesn't exist. I think that now there is a lot more active oppression than there was back in the fifties, because a, people everywhere are more aware of their own marginalisation and that they have a choice as to how they deal with it, and b, people who have not suffered under the kyriarchy, or have even benefited from it, are feeling defensive and threatened as awareness spreads, and a natural human response in that situation is to double down and defend the unfairness on whatever grounds suggest themselves. I escape active oppression now because I'm only out online and only my friends know or care, but sooner or later, I think, that restriction's going to start to chafe just the way my boy name did, and then I'll have some choices to make. But that's down the line.

So...what about the parents I know, all of whom as far as I'm aware have allowed their children to be assigned genders at birth? No, they're not oppressing either. It's not oppression to make a best guess at or before the moment of birth, while the brain is still booting up and finding out what all the levers and buttons do. "WAAAAAAA" is not helpful as a guide to orientation. A new child needs something to hang an identity on; there have to be certainties at that point, solid facts, even if later on they turn out to be less than solid. I know that if any of their children starts to find their assigned gender problematic, the parents I know will be understanding, gentle, and absolutely open to whatever path the child wishes to follow. Because I have the very best friends, that's how I know.