Some feminists are transphobic - deal with it.

Lately there's been a lot in the news about high profile transgender folk. Seems people have been talking over tea a bit more than before, and recently a close friend of mine asked me to comment on a thread where a troll was bandying about some choice words regarding transsexual women wanting to be accepted as, you know, women.This made me feel a bit ranty. So without further ado - to the rant blog!

Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. And yes, I mean like "real" men, and "real" women (why do those concepts give me the heebie-jeebies?)

Why do I say this? Because some really clever scientists who did some really complicated sciency stuff (you know, like brainscans and twin studies and post mortem brain structure studies) tells me that this is probably a good thing to do.

Some very pushy feminist types, especially some very butch lesbians and a couple of very camp gay guys, have given me some really pretty sexy philosophical arguments as to why they think gender is all a evil societal construct. They seemed legit, being homosexual and all, and some of them even had philosophy majors. You could be forgiven for thinking their opinions are authoritative. Still, maybe its just me, but where medical conditions are concerned, I tend to prefer theories that contain data that came from a medical professional, not a minority activist or a philosophy major.

While from a purely genotypical and phenotypical perspective it is technically accurate to describe transsexual individuals as being male/female  according to  birth sex, it turns out that what defines ones gender as either male or female is rather more complex than either genetics OR genitalia.

I can refer you to a very informative article which explains in fairly thorough detail where the diagnosis, treatment and definition of trans comes from historically, and what current medical science has come to know in recent years about this condition. My favourite bit is where they come to the conclusion that brain development  in-utero largely determines gender identity, and that definite brain structure differences are observable between genders - also in transsexual folk who identify as those genders.

The  long and the short of it seems to be that our brains are actually structurally linked to our gender identities, and, we were born that way.

If you want to know more, feel free to hit up some Google scholar articles or a couple of good libraries. I was required to do so myself not so long ago. Oh and look at recent publications, since the really juicy mind altering discoveries are less than 10 years old.

As for the philosophers:

I have several issues with the inherent sexism and patriarchal structures that tend to crop up in transgendered circles. I wondered why it was so important for transwomen/men to be "women" or "men", and not just "transwomen"/ "transmen". Surely we should be fighting for these terms to be accepted, instead of trying to obscure the problem behind genetic and phenotypical word games?

I'm pansexual. I'm in a polyamorous triad. I'm into BDSM. I do not subscribe to any religious or philosophical dogma for much longer than it takes me to read up about it. To paraphrase Henry Rollins I "burned my closet for kindling". Lets face it, I have a desperate incompatibility with things coercively normative.

However, when I fell in love with a thoroughly no-nonsense young trans individual who had a great sense of humour and a low bullshit quotient, I discovered to my shame that I had been propagating coercively normative ideologies in the name of equality and activism for a number of years. I was Cisgendered (my wetware matches my software, I was assigned my chosen gender at birth) and therefore rather blind to cissexism.

What 20 years of feminism could not teach me, I learned when I loved someone who lived with this on a daily basis. In time I discovered that what I thought I knew about gender equality was littered with prejudice and propaganda propagated by all factions of the gender wars.

Interestingly, transpeople have often been invisible observers in the gender wars. For those who do not appear obviously transgendered (they "Pass") a world is opened up where they become privy to the secret intimate world that is guarded by each individual gender grouping. 

We, the cisgendered majority, accept every day in our basic interactions a rather remarkable amount of silent sexism from each other. Take it from a transperson  to know just how many small prejudices we are all blind to. We've been taking this stuff in our stride for so long, nobody even knows it's bullshit - because none of us will ever see the way the other side lives. I sure as hell learned a lot about invisible sexism from my trans partner, and I'm a better feminist for broadening my mind to include that worldview.

Without shame or rancour, I was set straight about what transsexuality is and isn't. It is, simply put, a medical condition. That is all. 

 

The hysterical rantings often held up in an attempt to protect the sanctified and holy spaces of the cisgendered (like bathrooms and feminism) are, in my opinion, roughly on par with the arguments proposed for "protecting" heterosexual marriage. Same bullshit, different topic. Transgender people are as much of a threat to cisgendered interests and spaces as homosexuals are to heterosexual marriage.

There are no really tasty benefits to being transgendered. The suicide rate is over 50%, the overall death rate 75%, due to such factors as starvation, exposure to the elements, assualt, and murder. They face the most frequent and most serious discrimination of any minority group in the LGBT cluster. They are frequently profiled as being mentally ill, pathological liars and sexually deviant (which, research shows, is no more likely to be true of them than of their cisgendered counterparts, or other minority groupings). Hell, when their condition is managed using internationally approved treatment protocols, they actually look pretty...normal. You know, like that kid with bad eyes who got glasses and could then live the rest of their lives reading the board from the back row like anyone else.

Still, it turns out that being accepted as your target gender at all is a pretty shitty second prize when you have to live as "Freaky Friday" for your entire childhood, youth and reproductive years (and if you are treated in your youth, the treatment leaves you sterile, and you live the rest of your life afraid to have people see your childhood photos).

Lets not even BEGIN to talk about the cost and scarcity of medical treatment. How would you feel if you needed that pair of glasses, but you had to wait 25 years* to get one because your minority is so small that no facilities are available to receive treatment sooner? Unless, of course, you're willing to fork out half a million Rand for good treatment in Thailand.

For transsexuals, being accepted as a woman/man is not primarily an attempt at subdueing an unaccepting society, but a best effort attempt at treating a truly craptastic medical condition.There is, at best, only poor palliative and prosthetic treatment, and you'll just have to live with the fact that there is no real remedy for the chimerism of having brain structures mapped onto physiology that is opposite to your gender.

You know, like having to wear scratchy contact lenses or bottlebottom brainy-specs. Even if they are really cool specs, or really nice contact lenses, you are still going to get called four eyes, or end up with pink eye twice a year. But then...glasses won't get you  beaten to death by bullies the way peeing standing up/ not peeing standing up potentially can.

Its not a lame defense against the patriarchy or an attempt to gain male privilage. Its not generally motivated purely by self hatred or a desire to conform to gender normativity. Its about having what all of the rest of us Cisgendered schmucks take for granted - having your phenotypical carpet match your neurological drapes.

For me, accepting transsexual women as women is about widening the parameters of what it means to be a man or a woman. To permit anyone who wants to claim that gender construct to do so if they wish - much like allowing modern feminists to be Volvo-driving soccer moms (if that's what floats their neo-feminist boats). Its about letting go of policing gender. Its about conceding that despite our desperate attempt to claim that gender is purely a societal construct, science has shown us this is NOT the case.

It really sucks for activists when their arguments dissolve in a puff of scientific smoke, but I am a scientist first, and an activist second, so my brain didn't hurt so much the day after I woke up from this particular hangover.

We tend not to deal with that kind of defeat well, especially when our entire argument rests on (faulty) assumptions about gender that we have been fighting to entrench for generations - the idea that we have roughly interchangeable brains gender-wise.

As usual, in nature, the argument is rather more complex. Boys and girls can be whatever they want to be, because for every type of girl or boy or gender variant individual, there is a place in the wide continuum of human diversity. If we learn anything at all from the Kinsey report (other than that humans are a really creatively horny species), it is that human beings are extremely diverse.

Everyone deserves to be whatever they were born to be, or want to be - without judgement from either the moral majority OR minority.

I've reached a place in my life where I don't fight for us to wipe clean the slate of gender constructs anymore. I fight for the right for anyone to claim whatever gender construct they choose for themselves - because to me that is true equality. That is honouring the bell-curve. That is accepting that we are both a product of nature AND nurture. Accepting that some men have vaginas and some women have penises is really of no consequence to anyone who genuinely wants to fuck the patriarchy and free women from eons of oppression.

Trans people generally fight really hard for gender equality and to destroy sexism and patriarchal power - because transmen really hate the patriarchy for telling them that being a man isn't an option, and transwomen really hate sexism because society treats them like even bigger crap than cis women.

They hate this stuff JUST LIKE WE DO.

So in short, friends, please can we stop hating on them for wanting to be men and women just like us?

:)

*Recent information from the Transgender therapy team at Grootte Schuur Hospital

Polyanarchy

So this question popped up on the Polyamory forums recently :

Hi Polly,

I’m interested in something-more-than-platonic with two friends of mine (seperately, rather than as a group). They’ve already been good friends for a while. If I ask one of them out, should I disclose that I fancy her friend too? And if so, when?

Ancelin

And a lot of the answers this poster got were pretty big on the whole "NOOOO don't do two at a time!" thing. On the other hand some people felt it would be lying NOT to tell both people. I just thought people were missing the point, so I found my ink and quill and got cracking :

I wouldn't make a hard rule about starting more than one relationship at the same time, but I would caution anyone who tried that they need to consider the amount of energy it will take to bootstrap two new relationships. New relationships are about as disruptive to your old lifestyle as having a child (ok, maybe not quite that bad but it comes close.) and you may find yourself suffering from burnout, or alternatively neglecting one of both of your partners because you don't have enough emotional bandwidth to keep up with the intensity of NRE generally found in a new relationship. Even old-hands at poly struggle with this particular nugget. 

I think the idea of learning to just sit with your affection for a person for a while is a good thing. Sometimes it just isn't the right time or place to start a relationship. Life is long, and it is worth it to take your time rather than compulsively attaching yourself to every person you are attracted to just because you are not prohibited from doing so. I don't think that qualifies as being deceitful - it strikes me as being a mature, responsible adult.

Then again you simply can't always control when you find someone who just fits, and if there happens to be two then the best you can do is arm yourself with foreknowledge. My best piece of advice would be to really focus on remembering to take care of your own needs, and encouraging your lovers to do likewise. Early on in a relationship we all tend to want to do anything and everything to please our new partner, and it is easy to let yourself get lost in that (I speak from experience here!). Consciously take some time-outs where you spend time alone with yourself taking stock and remind your lovers to do the same - especially if anyone in the group is new to polyamory.

I do not believe in hierarchical relationships - I prefer to see all my partners as part of my extended family, and families do their best not to play favourites. When any one person in my "family" has an issue, all of us who are involved sit down and talk about it in a group. They don't have to all be BBF's, or lovers, but they should at least be able to have an adult conversation with one another in a friendly manner. I may not be popular for saying this, but personally I feel that wanting to segregate different partners is a sign of a lack of trust between partners and maturity from the person who is insisting on the segregation.

It essentially boils down to an inability to accept the truth - that you are in a non-monogamous relationship, and that this requires adjustments on your part that may trigger your feelings of insecurity and abandonment. If you are not willing and able to address these issues in an adult fashion through clear communication with all involved parties, you may not be mature enough emotionally to handle polyamory. 

If those feelings are born out of issues in your existing relationship, it is best to resolve these issues with your partner BEFORE entering into a new relationship with a third party. If they are born out of previous trauma or abuse, I'd suggest getting therapy for a while, then trying again once you've learned to handle the issues better. It all boils down to taking personal responsibility for your own needs and happiness.

For me the heart of the matter is that there are no hard rules in Polyamory - much like Anarchy - and that it comes down to each of the partners involved knowing their own limitations well and practicing self discipline. There are no poly-policemen who will keep them in line, and it is up to them to show the maturity needed to self-regulate their relationship. 

That's all she wrote!

Grief and Shame

For many years I have thought that surely, having been diagnosed with a mental illness in my childhood, and having been in treatment almost the whole of my life I must have progressed a goodly ways along the path of grieving for the life I would never have because I am ill.

It has dawned on me just today that I have, instead, grown very very good at denial. I have been a fugitive from my grief for almost two decades now right from the first time as a ten year old I visited the local library and took out every book I could find about my disorder. I had been diagnosed for 6 years by that time, and I had become curious about what the Scientific community had to say about my disorder - I had grown frustrated with the lack of communication and education I was receiving from my parents and therapists. What does it mean to have this disorder? How am I different from a person who doesn't have this disorder? What can I do to minimise the effect it has on my life? All reasonable questions for any patient to ask when he receives a diagnosis.

What I read back then about the devastating effect it has - on your performance in school, in the workplace, in your personal relationships,on your lifespan - terrified me. I understood why nobody wanted to tell me anything about what this disorder would mean for my life.

I wondered whether it was realistic of me to hope that medication could ever help me get to that "normal" place on a permanent (or even semipermanent) basis. Would I ever be able to live a "normal" life? Would I always feel this maladjusted, and unhappy?

Ever since I was ten I have been running away from the answer to these questions - perhaps because even at ten I understood the truth that my symptoms are pervasive and their effect strikes to the heart of how we judge the value and worth of our lives: Wealth, health, the ability to be a productive and respected member of society, the desire to be self-supporting, the ability to love and be loved.

I spoke to no one of what I had learned, and I swore in my heart that it would NEVER happen to me. I would buck the trend. I'd crush the bell-curve with my boot. I would work harder, I would be smarter, I would learn coping skills, I would compensate, I would box it and bottle it and it would never ever destroy MY life. Never.

It really isn't a wonderful thing for a child to be precocious. I think they learn things too soon, before they know how to live with the things they learn.

Perhaps it took a day when I wasn't depressed anymore. A day when I felt good about myself and I believed that my life is worthwhile and that I am worthwhile. A day when could find the strength to stop running away from my grief. I think perhaps that day is today.

I have been trying for so very long to hide my illness. I have, over the years, been forced through one humiliating failure after another: Inability to maintain a career, trouble maintaining relationships, trouble sustaining good habits of self-care, failure to perform to my potential at work or study... tick box after tick box. I felt increasingly condemned to being a textbook example of "The effects for mental illness and developmental disorders on an individual".

And I was deeply and profoundly ashamed.

Brene Brown's research on shame and connectedness has had a profound effect on my mental health in the past year, and the heart of her research was the great truth that shame unravels connectedness. We all have shame, and the more we hide it and don't talk about it, the more it gnaws at us and makes us feel alone and unconnected. So I have begun to reveal more and more of my shame, in the hope that perhaps sharing it will help me feel less disconnected from the people I love and the world in general.

I was ashamed that I forget to bathe. That my house presents a health hazard almost half the year. That I am usually too depressed to do my fair share of the housework with my husband. That I struggle to make and maintain friendships.That I have a serious problem with my weight. That I have been struggling with sexual dysfunction for many years. That I am unable to remain gainfully employed. That I suffer from such severe mood-swings that I sometimes want to harm myself and others, and that have on occasion tried to do so.

But...lately I've begun to notice an odd thing: When I talk about being ill, I get better. When I admit to being lonely, I make friends. When I feel too ill to do anything, those friends help me out. The secret, it seems, was not to keep things secret.

I think so many of we - the "different" - are subject to great suffering, simply because we have imprisoned ourselves in a cage of shame, guilt, anxiety and grief over our failure to perform to the standards that society has set for us - and more often the standards we have set for ourselves.

We never speak of it except jokingly. We never weep where anyone can see us. We hide our illnesses and the effect it has on us so completely that we begin to live a lie. "You have medication now. You should be normal. Pull up your socks!" seems to be the subliminal message we all live by.

It has made psychiatric and developmental disorders invisible in society in just as effective a way as it was made invisible a hundred and fifty years ago by incarcerating the mentally ill in mental hospitals and chaining them to their beds - except society pats itself on the back and imagines that we are so very much more enlightened now then we were back then.

Then of course there are the countless people who still say such very insensitive and ridiculous things: "Mental illness is a choice." "Everyone is mentally ill these days, it's just a fad." "Medication is just a way for them to control your mind and make you a sheep."

My response to this is becoming almost an allergic reaction. In the words of Tim Minchin "Does the idea that a evening spent reading Wikipedia might enlighten you, frighten you?" With so much solid, properly referenced information at your fingertips, why do so many people still propagate belief systems concoted by glib, fast talking television personalities who have no credentials save their proximity to a celebrity, or founded in a denial of the fact that just perhaps they also might be "different".

In the age of such overwhelming and extensive Scientific research into the workings of the mind, when we know more about the way the brain works than ever before in the history of our world, WHY is it so difficult for people to accept that psychiatry isn't a form of quackery and that the illnesses described by their research are not some form of "get out of responsibility for free" card but rather a painful and tragic diagnosis that deserves the same empathy and understanding as diabetes, heart disease or cancer.

I don't want to lie anymore. I don't want to hide anymore. I don't want to feel that I am alone when I know that statistics indicate that between 2-7 percent of the population of Earth suffers from this disorder too, That's more nearly half a billion people worldwide. That doesn't even include other people who suffer from other psychiatric and developmental disorders - schizophrenics, major depressives, people with ADHD, people with various forms of delusions and psychosis, people with eating disorders, people with OCD, people on the Autistic spectrum - the list is endless.

The world does not only belong to ableminded people and I am not alone.

I am ashamed that I have a mental illness and I feel that despite my best efforts to fight back,it has devastated my life. I grieve for the loss I have suffered in quality of life just as a lupus sufferer grieves because of the loss of quality of life they suffer.

But I am loved, and I have friends. I have some good medication and my life is a good one. I am not afraid to admit that I am mentally ill, because I am beginning to realise that I am not ashamed of it any more - there is nothing to be ashamed of.

So tell me, what is it you are you ashamed of?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd9OhYroLN0&feature=relmfu

The story of our first date.

"...vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love." - Brene Brown


Today my husband told me the story of our first date.

I believe it is customary, in most normal marital relationships, for each partner to have some recollection of the events of their first date. For this reason it has always left me with a profound sense of shame when it occurred to me that I could not, for all my best efforts, recall the day I met my husband in person for the first time.

There are many other things I don't remember. For the first three years I did not know my own wedding date, and I still have to call my husband at least half the time someone wants to know his birth date.

I had always been ashamed to be so very absent-minded. Having been a child diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, I had been drilled on the shame of being late for appointments, forgetting birthdays and names, forgetting to keep a promise etc. etc. etc. By the time I was 10, I was quite terrified of forgetting. I felt like Dora the fish, or that girl in 50 First Dates - my mind was broken.

I hated forgetting or becoming distracted, and I was almost obsessively careful never to admit to it unless I felt it would be socially acceptable. Having felt the shame of forgetting so important a date as our first date, it never occurred to me that my husband would have been happy to remind me.

As is his way, he told me only the facts. He recalled how he arrived in a bakkie with his friend. He recalled that I was sitting on the metal garden chairs in my parent's garden. I wore a black top, and my pants were easy to unzipper.

At this point I smiled and felt a certain thrill, the kind often described in trashy romance novels as a frisson. Here I was, a grown up woman, hearing the story of her own seduction as a innocent young thing. Wonderment!

He took me with him in his mind: We drove to the nearby mall, and we watched the movie Swordfish. Neither of us remember the film well – we were otherwise occupied (Here he smiled like a sunny day). We petted in the back of the bakkie while his friend had a beer in the nearby bar.

And then I remembered. I remembered it for myself.

It flooded back. Being nervous and exited and terribly flattered that a young man who goes to University and is three years older than me and who had to travel two hours from Pretoria to Johannesburg to see me would want to come and meet me.

I remembered how we played and fondeled like good little closeted Afrikaans kids do when their parents aren't watching. I remembered my old boyfriend calling me on my cellphone, and me admitting that I was “with the new man in my life” just to cut him off, and then feeling afraid that I had admitted too much of how I felt about my new beau within his earshot.

I remembered more. I rememebered being just a kid, head over heels in love. I remembered the midnight texting and sexting. The cybering. The emails. The long philosophical discussions(which were to become a mainstay of our relationship). I remembered my V-shaped tops that had only spagetthi straps in the back and my hipsters that showed off my bellybutton.

I remembered reading Isaac Asimov for the first time. Larry Niven. Robert Heinlein.

In that moment of remembering it struck me that I was feeling a sense of joy so great that I wanted to soar up into the sky and do loop-de-loops. Here were the tender, beautiful days of my courtship brought vividly to life in my mind again.

It struck me then how much of a fool I had been. This happiness had always been there for the taking. I could have felt this moment again each time I asked him to tell me the story.

Today we have been a couple for 3467 days, and for the first time I wasn't afraid to admit that I didn't remember our first date.

Suddenly I realised there were many other things I have been ashamed to admit I had forgotten. Many things that my husband, who has the mind of a cyborg datarecorder, could be called upon to recall with me, and in so doing, enjoy once more.

The thrill of exitement this gave me was immense and made me feel so great a measure of joy that I felt I should sit down and write it all down this very instant.

:D

Polyamory v. Cheating

Having cheated on my husband, and since I credit this as part of my path to becoming polyamorous, I must confess I am biased in the argument over whether polyamory is of any use in resolving cheating. If cheating is symptomatic of a grave and incurable narcissism in a partner then certainly polyamory will not resolve anything. However there are other reasons why people cheat.

I think very often one of the true motives behind cheating is treating love as a currency in relationships, and assuming you are poor. I certainly know this to be true of my own relationship before we became polyamorous. Furthermore there is a great deal of insecurity and distrust in relationships where one or both partners cheat.

In most monogamous relationships there is a quite common idea that states that, upon marriage/dating/co-habiting all your romantic love now belongs to your partner.

In this context having another relationship essentially involves you giving your love, which does not belong to you because you are part of a couple, to another person. If love is a currency, then having a second relationship is like buying one partner with your finite measure of love, then taking the love back and buying another with the same currency. Apart from the pain of the implied rejection, there is a great measure of outrage over the fraud implicit in this scenario. Even if this is done by agreement it will be very painful for at least one party in the trio.

In polyamory (assuming it is practiced properly) there is no fraud, and love is not considered a currency. It is rather something of a natural resource like air which everyone is entitled to and which is in abundant supply. It is not considered unusual for two partners to agree to allow one another the freedom to explore other relationships because there is no assumption that you are giving away a scarce resource - your partner's love.

Cheating is often a result of insecurity and distrust. When partners feel insecure and distrust each other, they legislate. Thou shalt not look at another woman (lest you leave me for her). Thou shalt not flirt with another man (lest he be better in bed than me). It all boils down to the desire we all have to be loved and wanted and the fear that when the chips are down there are others who are more lovable than we are. These rules do not make us feel any more secure because they undermine any attempt at building real trust. The simple truth is that in such relationships people do not agree to be true to each other through the execution of free will but through mutual fear of abandonment.

For them, learning about non-monogamy may hold the key to healing an unhealthy relationship dynamic, even if they do not convert to an open relationship.

Society idealises and idolises romantic love. It is treated as if it were an illness we contract, or some disease that we suffer from. Our judgement is expected to be warped, our behaviour ridiculous and childish at times and a whole separate set of rules apply to interactions that involve romantic love as opposed to any other kind of love. "All's fair in love and war" people say. A vast swathe of otherwise unacceptable behaviours (jealousy, rudeness, vengefulness etc.) are excused when love is involved. They defend our right to resolve our insecurities and lack of trust by constructing elaborate structures that restrict our partner's movements, social attachments, finances and even feelings rather than by confronting the issue through communication and negotiation. All in the name of "Love".

How would I say polyamory is an alternative to cheating?

I feel it should be understood by the world that trust is the real currency of relationships and that the communication of needs and expectations is the grease that oils the cogs of coupledom. Furthermore total honesty between partners is only way that any relationship should be conducted whether it is monogamous or polyamorous because real love is not conditional.

Polyamorous people can help by teaching these concepts, which are the pillars upon which we build our open relationships. Those of us who successfully practice polyamory needs must have learned some of these skills, because there is nothing that flies apart as quickly as a polyamorous relationship where people don't communicate, don't trust each other and believe that love is a currency which is in short supply.

Colouring outside the lines

Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?'

'Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded. They are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.'

---Neal Stephenson, "The Diamond Age"


Recently I have found myself looking back on the pain I have suffered throughout my life and this year in particular, when I had a miscarriage, got the measles, lost my job and relapsed into a Bipolar depression.

In retrospect, I realise that somehow I have walked away profoundly grateful, no matter the sadness I have had to deal with. Things could have been a hell of a lot worse. I could be dead.

When your tightly controlled little universe comes crashing down around you, you have to confront who you are deep down in your heart. I did not truly know who I was until this year. I did not know what I had in me.

Had it not been for the trials of this year, I may have lacked the deep confidence in myself needed to pluck up the nerve to face society on my own terms. All of us should be able to do that at some point in our lives.

I know now what I have to do with my life, and to do that there is a matter I must address that I have been neglecting for some time.


"If I was gay, there would be no closet, you would never see the closet I came out of. Why? I would have burned it for kindling by the time I was 12. Because I know with all certainty in my mind, there is nothing wrong with being gay, and you know it." - Henry Rollins



Hello, World. I am bisexual, polyamorous and agnostic.


For those who are unclear: Bisexual means I can love both men and women romantically and intimately.

Polyamory is the practice of having more than one romantic partner at a time – what I call "equal opportunity polygamy".

Agnostic means I'm still thinking over whether I believe any of the literature passed around regarding various deities and philosophies of life.




"You people and your quaint little categories." — Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood


Some of you may know this already. To those of you who do I want to send my sincerest thanks for being the kind of people who's tolerance and non-judgemental attitude has bolstered my courage and helped me reach this point. For the rest of you I apologise for having lived a lie for so long – you deserved better from me. I shall endeavour to correct this fault.

In the spirit of new beginnings and making New Year's resolutions I am, this year, stepping up and making my voice heard. My attitude to all comers is the following: Everyone has an opinion. Opinions are like arseholes - everyone has one. You are permitted to have a different one than me.

As long as you do not threaten my right to life, happiness and reasonable freedom of choice, and I likewise do not threaten yours, there really is no cause for us to argue. I respect people who have strong convictions. I am someone who has strong convictions myself.

I am not a militant individual. I have always considered myself more of a lover than a fighter. Having been someone who was until fairly recently deeply convinced of the validity of my own monogamy, religion and straight sexual orientation I can say this: I feel these choices each have their own benefits and detriments and everyone should have the freedom to pursue whichever option they should deem congruent with their own particular beliefs at any given time.

In other words: I got no beef with any of you.


"If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies."

— Jon Stewart


I do not believe that religion is defunct and irrelevant. Rather, I truly have not made up my mind and must investigate further before drawing any conclusions. Tell me what you believe. I really want to understand if I can, even if we do not agree.

I do not reject monogamy as a concept. I just do not believe that I am monogamous. I think it is an immensely wonderful thing when two people can be happy with the love of only one another for the rest of their lives. I just can't seem to color inside the lines of this particular colouring book.

Let none of you, for a moment, question my love for my husband or his for me. Between us we have the very deep and passionate love that abides for a lifetime. I fully expect to be laid to rest beside him when I die. But we do not own each other's lives.


Juno's Dad: 'Look, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person is still going to think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with.'

Juno: 'Yeah.... And I think I've found that person.' - Juno.



As for bisexuality, well frankly, I am as surprised as you are. Until just this very year I had never in my life experienced a burning passion for a female member of our species. Based on this fact I had mistakenly (despite much experimentation on my part) supposed myself to be straight.

To have one's perceived gender identity alter at the age of 27 is rather disconcerting, but in retrospect I realise now that I had always been as I am. I just simply hadn't met a woman I felt a strong enough affinity for to break the social conditioning I had had as a child. Upon arrival of said woman I was required to alter my opinion of myself.


“When the facts change, I change my mind.” -John Maynard Keynes


And so I come to the heart of my message to all my readers out there.

All the ways that my life has been a royal fuckup has taught me that life, despite my deeply idealistic personality, does not always work out like a movie script. If you want to have a happy ending to your life you're going to have to get off your behind and grab victory from the jaws of defeat.

You need to fight for who you are, because who you are is exactly what the world needs. If you are religious you can believe it is because God created you for a purpose. If you are a secularist you may justify it by saying that diversity in the population encourages robustness of the gene pool.

Whatever. I can't make you believe anything. I can tell you what I believe: I believe that you matter. All of you. Not for the person you pretend to be, but for the one that you are. I know, because you matter to ME.

Yes, I mean that it the most global sense. There may be as many people on the planet as grains of sand, but if any one individual is standing before me, you can bet your bottom dollar that I give a damn about them. Don't you? Do me a favour and go read 1 Corinthians 13 one more time.


Ender: "No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins." - Orson Scott Card, "Speaker for the Dead"


New Year is usually a time when we all question ourselves and look back with joy or regret at the year that we have lived. For those out there who look back and feel a great sadness for whatever reason I want you to know that no matter how terrible the events or circumstances, how obscure your life, how grave your sin or how old the enmity there is always hope.


"Do not go softly into that good night" - Dylan Thomas.


I am a manic depressive and as such I can tell you I know what it is to feel hopelessness. You don't try to commit suicide three times unless you've had a brush with your own internal Dementors. Yet I believe happiness is something that can be manufactured, like a McGyvered solution, from the smallest of paperclips and a bit of bubblegum. Never stop looking for it, especially when you are in pain. It is the stuff that meaning is built out of. It is the stuff that helps us survive the darkest despair.

That, and whatever psychiatric drugs float your particular boat.


"You know what I do when I'm feeling sad? I stop feeling sad and feel awesome instead." - Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother.


In a universe filled with entropy, with a society full of judgement and hatred and agression, being different can be dangerous. Here's the thing though: We are ALL different.


"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -Robert A. Heinlein


For all of you out there who feel like you are living in a closet and you're not letting your little light shine, I invite you to come join me at the bonfire this New Year and let the motherfucker burn.

Romantiese pessimisme

Hou my,
streel my
en belowe my
“Ewig Durende Liefde”.

Laat ek my hart
netjies ,
in tissue papier
weggee.

Lees saam aan
Romeo & Juliet
en
English Patient

Dan:
Belowe my jy sal doodgaan
(êrens,in my arms,
oor 'n misverstand)

Sodat ek kan treur en klaarkry
en nooit,
soos baie ander romantiese "fools",
moet opeindig

en erken
dat ek
eintlik nie kan glo
in lewenslange liefde nie.