Growl

So SO SO glad to be past the digestive system part of my bio class. Half the chapter was about nutrition, meaning that there was a ton of “OBESITY CRISIS OMGZDEATHFATZ!” There was the obligatory “studies have found a ::coughmumble::correlation::coughmumble:: between obesity and DEATHLY DYINGS OF DEATH!” the so strident point of the initial two chapters about correlation=/=causation got tossed out the window as the chapter then launches into the evils of being fat.

I kinda saw this coming. In an earlier chapter it talks about adipose cells and how they are finding that fat people simply have more of them. Those cells don’t come out of nowhere, we are born, live and die with them. And instead of just leaving it at that, the book’s authors jump to the conclusion that the solution to the “obesity crisis” is to figure out how people with more adipose cells can have those “excess” cells removed. You know, instead of FUCKING ACCEPTING THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST FAT AND THAT THE FAT IS NOT THE PROBLEM.

Sure, there are health problems that can be attributed to food quality and activity level, as well as environmental and economic factors. The ACTUAL evidence (as opposed to a correlation) suggests that these problems occur just as readily in “normal” and “underweight” people exposed to those same factors and that their health outcomes are actually worse because its assumed that they are healthy because they aren’t fat. I really have to find the links to those studies. Especially because my text book steam rolls right the fuck over the fact that while there are fewer of those studies than there are of the FAT IS GOING TO MURDER YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN IN YOUR SLEEP THEN CACKLE EVILLY AS IT PISSES ON YOUR CARPET correlational studies, the quality of the evidence is considerably different and by the books own standards, considerably more valid.

My spouse is a perfect example. Zie has always been bean-pole skinny and unable to gain significant weight no matter WHAT diet zie had. Hir doctors always ignored this, and gave hir a clean bill of health every time. Turns out zie had ciliac and was dealing with a massive nutritional deficit because of the damage to hir intestines.

At worst, being fat can be a symptom of a larger, systemic issue. Its not even a necessary one. But mostly? Fat is just a part of your body, doing what it has evolved to do. The fear mongering about fat? Is having a real, measurable impact on public health.
This is one place with the scientific community where I really sorta lose my shit. THIS IS BAD SCIENCE! I am almost as upset at the bastardization of a system that is supposed to be constructed to avoid shit like this than I am at the actual harm these assumptions are doing to me, mine and the larger human community. YOU ARE DOING SCIENCE WRONG AND GODAMMIT THAT PISSES ME OFF.

of nipple shields and ceiling wax, cabbages and kings

(Image description: an indented circle of silicone that peaks in a cone in the middle)

I have been using a nipple shield as a breast feeding aid since coming home from the hospital. Above is a picture of the type pf shield the lactation consultant gave me. My baby was 4 weeks early and apparently with babies born that early there is usually issues with initial breast feeding. Their jaws are not developed enough to latch on without help.

Anyway, the shield was a godsend at first, since I was having the hardest time figuring out how the fuck this breast feeding thing was supposed to work with a child that was smaller than one of my boobs, while my boobs were leaking everywhere and almost drowning hir, AND we were on an aggressive feeding schedule to help hir get hir bilirubin count down to a normallish level and avoid re-hospitalization for jaundice. I couldn't for the life of me get hir to latch without it, and my nipples had this awful habit of almost retracting into my breast when I tried.

The only problem was that the shield was a bit too small for one of my nipples and caused me quite a bit of pain. there was blood, and scabbing and throbbing, yelpy pain. I'd cry while feeding on that side, or kick the floor really hard. Made life miserable for the entire house, let me tell you. It got so bad that I spent two days nursing exclusively on the undamaged side and only pumping the side that hurt. Which meant staying in the same spot all freaking day, and essentially doing nothing but pumping and nursing.

One night I lost the fucking thing and almost had a total meltdown because the baby was hungry and crying and I couldn't feed hir and I was broken because I couldn't feed my child without help and Oh My God I was a miserable fucking failure failure FAILURE! (I felt like a right dickhead when I discovered I'd thrown this awful fit thinking it was lost and the damn thing was just shut in my computer.)

After quite a few frustrating attempts, I had almost quit trying to move to feeding without it, and had resigned myself to pain and the stress of keeping track of this little piece of silicone for the duration of our breast feeding relationship. Then about a week ago, my aunt that was visiting to meet the baby was watching me breast feed with the shield, and she suggested, gently, that I was ready to try and get hir to latch without it.

This aunt and I have always been close, to the point that I see her as almost a mother/sister in my life. While she subscribes to some spiritual ideas that can be obnoxious in some ways, she has also given me some great insights through the years. So I gave it a shot. And holy shit, first try and zie latched on like we had never done anything else! Today was the first day we went for all of our feeds without it, and the only things that have changed is how I feel about feeding my baby.

I'm so proud of hir...and of me. We are fucking awesome :D

The Objectivity Farce

(Editors Note: this post was originally published 6/26/2011)

“Eventually, one has to take sides if one is to remain human.”

—

-Mr. Hinh, The Quiet American I got involved in facebook drama today. It revolved around my roommate and the end of her previous relationship. The relationship was abusive on many levels and her ex continues to find ways to continue abusing her even though they live in different states. He has engaged in an ongoing attempt to isolate her by constructing a narrative that paints her as the stereotype in separations. He claims, always via facebook and never to her face where she can defend herself, that she cheated on him and is trying to keep him from his children. None of this is true. Unfortunately, because it neatly fits the stereotype, quite a few people believe it. The people believing it aren’t my issue. My issue are the few people in our friend group that are claiming that they are “neutral” and “not taking sides.” I finally snapped today and made it very clear that I saw no neutral ground here. In situations where abuse is present, in personal matters or in larger global matters, there is no neutral. There is no “uninvolved.” If you know about it, you’re involved. If you choose the illusion of inaction, you are not just involved, you are implicated. And I don’t want to police people by demanding they act as I see fit. I do realize that everyone has a limit of what they can do and what they can handle. I am just sick of this idea that we should remain above the bad things that people we thought we could trust do to those we claim to care about. And I am still a bit pissed off at being accused of “starting drama for drama sake” because I was willing to make a goddamn decision and because I was willing to be involved.

Contrasts and confessions

Editor's note: this piece was originally posted on June 5, 2011

I have a roommate. My roommate is a dear friend of mine, and she lives with me because she needed a place to get away from a shitty relationship.

She and I are close because we diverge radically on certain ideas but still manage to respect each other. The big diverge is on reproductive choices. When we met she was ardently pro-life, to the point that she openly advocated for the striking down of Roe v. Wade. From her, I learned how to respectfully debate and explain my stance to people that held opinions I found to be dangerous and oppressive. From me, she came to the realization that if she did not want people to control her choices, maybe she shouldn’t advocate for controlling theirs. She still is absolutely against having an abortion when she gets pregnant regardless of whether she is in a position where another child is something she can handle. Because of this perspective, she has three children aged 18 months to 5 years and is expecting another in January.

She has admitted to me that while she loves her kids, none of them were planned and that she really isn’t very happy that she has so many kids. She told me that she feels obligated to bring her pregnancies to term, and that she only has kids because she honestly felt she had no other choice. She has repeatedly told me that she wished she could have a life of her own. I have been watching her struggle between the idea that she deserves to choose when/how many kids she has and the idea that she only deserves to gestate every fertilized egg that implants regardless of her ability to provide for them.

Now that I have a child of my own, and have gone through the experience of pregnancy and childbirth, her position and the upset I see from her every day makes me so incredibly sad. I have been there for all four of her pregnancies and after the first one, well…lets just say that I have never seen someone so resigned to a fate that they found unpleasant before.

I try really hard not to judge the reproductive choices of others. I feel that to do so I am betraying my own ethical code. Its a strain with my friend. Because while my ethical code is built around “live and let live” its also built around the idea that we all deserve to be free to make the choices that nourish us, that leave us content with our lives. Anything that prevents us from doing so is unjust and must be stopped. This is applied through a lens that understands and accepts that certain groups in my country and culture have been systematically forced into situations that strip them of those options. It is leavened with the assertion that any choice we make that oppresses others is also unjust no matter how content it makes us. That is the source of everything I do to strive for a more just world.

When I watch how miserable she is and how that misery escapes her in little ways like assuming that my child has the capacity to manipulate me consciously at the age of 5 weeks, or throwaway statements describing her children as sociopaths, I find my ability to not judge someone’s choices strained in the extreme. It takes a great deal of self control not to sit down and tell her that how much she hates her life is the reason why people like almost all the uterus bearing members of my immediate family have had abortions. To tell her that she is allowed to strive for her own happiness even if it means not bringing a pregnancy to term. To tell her that this is the problem with a pro-life ideology, that it leaves people like her spending their lives in obligation to people they love but don’t like very much, and never having the chance to be simply content with their situation.

I mean, I don’t think that parenthood is this joyful dance through a field of daisies while the sky rains kittens pooping rainbow marshmallows. I realize that parenthood is great sometimes, and shit sometimes. It can make you incandescently joyous, and utterly miserable, and oftentimes manage both at once. Mostly its just another part of life, and like many things that are a part of life, I believe very strongly that one should be able to choose to engage in it as freely as possible.

Its tearing me apart, feeling awful for her because I haven’t seen her truly content with her life since the birth of her first child, and at the same time feeling like I’m fucking up big time for even daring to think that she made bad choices. I realize that these choices are not made in a vacuum, so I don’t blame her for her misery. I do wonder what it would take for her to value her own happiness to the same degree that she feels obligated to give up her life for her children. I can’t resolve this conflict of my ethics, that seems to tell me that since she chose this, I have to stand by and just watch her be miserable.

So that’s my confession, I guess. That I still make this about me.

Bump in the Road

Editor's note: this piece was originally posted 6/1/2011

(Content notice: discussion of gender dysphoria and thoughts of self harm) Okay.

So. One thing I didn’t prepare myself for. Issues with breast feeding triggering dysphoria.

Since I’m still working it all out, I rarely discuss the issues that come with my gender identity. Hell, until recently, I assumed that my gender issues were just deeply internalized fat hatred. Mainly because I experience little to no dysphoria regarding my genitals, I mostly don’t regard them unless I’m having sex. Pretty much all of my dysphoria centers around my breasts, which were H cups prior to pregnancy.

When I was a teenager, my boobs exploded over night. Flat chest to C cups and a year later C cups to Gs. I hated them. They never felt right or comfortable. I didn’t know what dysphoria was or that the nights I spent in tears, barely preventing myself from going to the kitchen and trying to cut them off with my father’s knives were part of anything more than normal fat teen self hatred. The fact that this coincided with getting passively kicked out of the dance company I was in just made me hate them more. It felt like my body betrayed me.

As I got older, I decided to keep my breasts purely for breast feeding purposes. They are not particularly sensitive and I derive little to no sexual pleasure from them, so beyond the function of feeding a baby, I saw no point in keeping them. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that breast feeding is something much more complex than it seems and that doesn’t always work right away. Imagine my dismay when I found breast feeding rather difficult.

My child was just early enough to have difficulty coordinating hir suck-swallow-breathe reflex. When babies are born as early as zie was, they also have trouble latching on to the nipple. That plus my nipples being flat (they don’t get or stay perky) makes breast feeding a stressful, pain inducing task. Add a dose of dysphoria into the mix and you pretty much have a typical night at my house since the baby came home. I haven’t had such a painful relationship with my boobs since they first grew.

I mean, I kept these fucking things for this? and then the guilt sets in, because I want to feed my child, and I enjoy seeing hir fed and growing and comfortable with a full belly, but at the same time its all I can do not to give up and hack these fuckers off for good.

Pregnancy helped me do a 180 on my body image, but my breasts were excluded from that. And with the lack of visibility of genderqueer/fluid folks like myself, there really isn't a manual for this.

Happy Birthday: a fat queer birth story

Editor's Note: this piece was originally posted May 20th 2011)

(content notice for discussions of pain and medical interventions)

My dad is a labor and delivery nurse, and he likes to say that the more strict someone's birth plan is, the more likely it is that their plan is going to go horribly awry. For my child's birth, nothing went to plan. Well, that's not entirely true. My only set plan was to have a baby, and that zie would be able to survive outside of me. And I had very little confidence in that plan, to be honest.

I spent most of my pregnancy being fairly hermit-like, both on and off-line, because I was waiting for something to go wrong. After the struggle to conceive and carry a pregnancy, I was fairly well convinced that my body was little more than a death trap for any new life. I spent years being checked for conditions like poly cystic ovaries that can cause infertility, and being told that obesity caused them. I really internalized the idea that being fat meant I had destroyed my chances of reproducing. So when I finally did manage a pregnancy, I was absolutely convinced that my body would kill it somewhere along the way. I was so scared of this that I couldn't discuss anything about it with anyone. I felt like I was getting everyone's hopes up for no reason, since clearly there was no way that a fatty like me would be able to carry a pregnancy to term or give birth to a live child.

I had also spent a good deal of my pregnancy delving into my gender identity. Trying to find that space between queer identity, internalized fat hatred and how quickly my body was changing in ways that are coded very femininely and as "good" fatness.

So when my water broke 4 weeks early, while I was preparing for a maternity photo shoot, I was a little surprised. Partially because it was early and partially because a substantial part of me was convinced that I would not get that far. Then again, I had been having a constant back ache for the last two days, and added pressure on my cervix so it wasn't a complete shock.

I went right to the bathroom, and called my birth coach upstairs just to be sure. At that moment, my spouse and my photographer got to the house. They found me standing pantsless and cursing a blue streak in the bathtub as amniotic fluid gushed down my legs. I called my midwives, and because I was early they told me to go to the Perinatal Evaluation and Treatment Unit (PETU) at their associated hospital as soon as possible.

My original plan was to try and labor with as little intervention as possible. I was flexible, however. Having a family member that does nothing but help birth babies gave me a unique perspective on the reality of giving birth. For the most part, intervention is unneeded, but when it is, accepting small interventions can prevent larger ones. There were only a few interventions that I wanted to avoid at all costs, namely episiotomy (cutting into the flesh from the vaginal opening towards the anus to widen the vaginal opening) and a c-section. Episiotomies generally lead to worse tearing than just pushing, and the outcomes for c-sections tend to be not so hot.

Being 4 weeks before my due date made avoiding all intervention impossible. I ended up in the PETU on external fetal monitors for an hour. The midwife on call was concerned about the possible reasons why I had ruptured so early. Most reasons were not too big of a deal but the possibility of infection was a concern. So we discussed artificially ripening my cervix, and I was left in the PETU to labor so we could see if that would be necessary.

I went into labor on a ridiculously busy night, so it took 6 hours before they could move me to a delivery room. I basically spent all of early labor and part of active labor in a tiny space designed for triage. Not fun. I consented to a heparin lock, so I would be able to get hooked to an IV relatively quickly if need be.6 hours, pacing a small space, with my spouse applying pressure to my lower back once my contractions got so bad that I couldn't talk through them.

12 hours after I ruptured, the midwife came in with a look on her face that did not inspire confidence. She told me that with the fear of infection and the fact that I had only dilated 3 centimeters, she thought it best to try a bit of enhancement. She suggested what my dad calls "a sniff of Pit." A small dose of Pitocin, with some Benadryl and a pain medication so I could rest before the birthing stage. Her biggest concerns were 1) getting the baby out before we hit the 24 hour mark, and 2) making sure that I had the energy to push once I was ready.

I went for it. Not two minutes after they attached my IV and injected the pain meds, I was passing out. I managed to sleep for about three hours before the contractions woke me up again. I tried to get up and move to deal with the pain, but the external fetal monitor severely limited my movement. Every time I tried to squat to deal with the pain, the monitor slipped and they lost the baby's heartbeat. I moved into the bed, and we tried to manage the contraction pain with massage. My spouse climbed into the bed next to me, and held me until the contractions started. Every time the pain began, zie'd massage my lower back and apply counter pressure until I relaxed.

over the next hour, I dilated from 4 cm to 10 cm. The pain spiked so quickly that I went into a full panic. I couldn't move during the contractions, and all of my coping techniques up to that point simply didn't cut the mustard. I was screaming and punching the bed through each one. If I could have moved, I'd have run away. My spouse was terrified that I was going to hurt myself and kept trying to comfort me in any way zie could. There honestly wasn't much comfort to be had. the pain had me in complete instinct mode. Anything vaguely resembling self-consciousness was gone. My birth coach was livid that I was left to scream that way, and was getting ready to find someone to come and care for me when the nurse and the midwife came in.

They checked me, and got me set up to push with a knotted sheet for me to hold onto. As I pushed, I was to pull myself up using the sheet. I was pushing for less than an hour when I began crowning. I could feel ears and a nose on the sides of the head, and seconds later Shai's head was out. The rest of her body slipped from me in a rush and suddenly I had a tiny, struggling, goo covered baby on my chest. My spouse was beside me, in tears, telling me how much zie loved me and how amazing I was. I was in utter shock. All I could say was "oh baby. Its a baby!" and run my hands over hir. I held hir while I was being stitched up and until zie had to be bathed.

Its funny.

I had so many fears about this whole thing. All of them are gone now. Every time I look at my Shai's little face, smell hir breath, feel hir tiny heartbeat while zie sleeps on my chest.

This is the most mundane and amazing thing I have ever done. and even with all the pain and frustration, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Alone time

Editor's note: this piece was originally posted April 16th 2011

In the mornings and at bed time I like to lay on my side and feel the baby move. (Since I’m at the point that I could give birth at any moment and the baby would survive, I think its safe to call hir a baby instead of a fetus.)

At night, my spouse puts hir hand on my belly and we just feel our child move together.

Its amazing to me the changes that have happened just in the last few months. This child has brought many things with hir.

My spouse put off her transition journey until we could manage a viable pregnancy.

We both wanted at least one child, and we were concerned about my ability to carry a successful pregnancy without help so we didn’t want to risk the significantly lessened odds of conception via artificial insemination or in-vitro. There was also the cost factor of such a path, which we are still not sure we can afford if we want to have a second child.

That positive pregnancy test back in September made her transition a current reality.

Until that day, we were looking at a five to ten year wait before even starting hormones. That day, the wait became a year and became very very real. The change this has brought about for hir and for me has been astounding. I have never seen my spouse so happy with just existing.

Engaging in something so heavily gendered as gestation and eventual parenthood has been a serious challenge. SO many people insist on using the word “Daddy” to describe my spouse and “Mommy” to describe me, and we haven’t figured out exactly what we can say to dissuade that that doesn’t out both of us as well as explaining in detail what non-binary means.

There is the additional fear about coming out to family. My parents know about my spouse at least (I don’t have the energy to try and explain myself to them) but my spouse’s parents don’t. And we are heavily dependent on their good will for a lot of things, not the least of which being our home. Now, I don’t think that my spouse’s father would ever contemplate taking our home away from us, and while I’m fairly certain hir mother wouldn’t either, this is also the same woman that yelled the word “Kikes” in my hearing so its hard to say. The outcome of this, well...we won't know for a while.

The other change zie has brought...for the first time in my life, I love my belly. I've always been round and I've been taught to hate it because fat is evil, especially on someone that everyone assumes is a girl. Now I have a feeling so deep about what my body can DO that hating it seems like a crime. My fat, queer body can and is growing and sustaining a child, a child that is already dearly loved and wanted. Its the most mundane, yet most amazing thing I have ever done, and I can't bring myself to hate the body that's doing it all. I was also worried about the deep cultural coding of reproductive bodies as "women" considering I am not one as such. But I have found a certainty of my actual gender identity along with the ability to bring new life into the world. I don't have to be a woman to do this right.

Even with gravity making sleeping at night almost impossible, I have never felt so free of the weight of a world that doesn't recognize the existence of myself or my family. Zie's not even here, and I already owe hir so much.

Not enough

(Editor's note: this post was originally published March 5, 2011)

Embarrassing admission time: I had no idea who Harvey Milk was until I started hearing about this movie.

Maybe not embarrassing. I’m actually a little annoyed by this. My mother was living in SF during the riots immediately following his assassination, yet I never knew who he was.

(warning, this is about to turn into a rant against my parents, and against not going far enough)

I posted Arwyn’s piece on raising her kid purple and being aware that not every kid is cis or straight and being open to the idea that your kid might be trans or queer on my Facebook. One of my friends responded by saying “I’m just going to let my kids be themselves.” When I talk to my parents about being queer (they don’t know about my gender issues) my mother talks about “teaching you guys to love the person, not the body.”

Well, revelation time, I didn’t even know that being queer or trans was possible until I figured out that I was queer and a friend told me that she was planning on transitioning. I was 16. I told my mom as soon as I realized, because I did trust her and I wanted her to say she was okay with it. That’s not what I got. I got “well, have you had sex with any of your boyfriends?” “Well, how do you know?” “Don’t you think its just a phase? I mean, you do a lot of things just for attention…”

we didn’t talk about my sexual orientation for almost a decade.

She still believes that because she didn’t threaten me, or kick me out or be physically violent that she was completely supportive. (My dad just sort of ignores the whole thing after making constipation faces when the subject comes up, or makes homophobic jokes about gay men then accuses me of being too sensitive when I point out that those jokes are only funny if you think there is something wrong with being gay. He also has deep insecurities about masculinity, specifically his own, but I think that can make a post in itself.) I’m sure my friend is comfortable leaving her support at “letting them be themselves” without any examination of how her expectations of who they are based on cultural expectations of cis and hetero normativity will give them a very specific message of how much she will support them if they aren’t cis or straight thinks that is enough.

Its not.

Its not enough.

If it was enough, it wouldn’t have taken me until my twenties to know that someone like Harvey Milk existed, or about Stonewall, or that transitioning from your birth assigned gender was even possible.

When the whole world around us tells us that only straight cis folk are real, we need more than not openly being hateful to be supported.

Dear Baby

(Editor's note: this piece was originally published February 26, 2011)

I saw a mother and teen, maybe adult daughter talking today, and it sent my mind questing ahead into possible futures for us. The idea of not being friends when you’re an adult makes me really sad. Even sadder, I think is just the thought of how, each year that you grow you won’t just be growing taller, stronger, or older, but growing away. On to a life of your own. And that makes me sad. In this mood, just the idea of you being born makes me a little sad, because we will lose something then. We will lose an intimacy that I can never share with anyone else, or with you, in the same way ever again.

I think that being pregnant with you is the most intimate thing I have ever done. You’re inside my body, for god’s sake, it can’t get any more intimate than that. You’re still so small, I can barely feel you kick sometimes, but already, I’m closer to you than I have ever been to another human being in my entire life. I was telling your mom today that while I don’t operate under the average person’s concept of modesty (I consider taking my clothes off in front of an audience to be an art form ;) [oh lordy, will I embarrass the crap out of you. Or not, but the idea is still hilarious]) I do have a limit insofar as what I will allow strangers to access about me. And that limit is true intimacy. I simply don’t allow just anyone close to me. And here I am, growing a complete stranger in my body.


I guess I should explain what I mean by intimacy. I’m not sure I even know how to put it into words, and sometimes words just obscure truth. Some of the deepest things in this world, the most meaningful, have to be experienced wordlessly. In these cases, words just serve to both complicate and over simplify the magnitude of these feelings. But, for the sake of honesty and in lieu of some other, more efficient way to make myself clear, i will try to explain.


Intimacy is letting people see and access your deepest known self. Its complete honesty about your strengths and flaws, and a willingness to not insist on that same access and honesty in return. Its about being who you genuinely feel you are with no reservations and worries. Its about giving someone the ability to touch the deepest parts of you, both physical and mental and trusting them not to hurt you unnecessarily and/or intentionally. Its about bringing down all the walls you know of and just being with this person.


Since you are inside me, and dependent completely on me for survival, I feel like the only way I can be with you is to be this open for you. If i don’t let these walls and masks drop, it becomes too easy for me to resent all the physical pain and difficulty that comes with growing a human being. I realize this is my weakness and not your fault, and I offer myself to you gladly.


I hope you like me.

round and round and round and round

editors note: this piece was originally posted 2/21/22

As most of you have already seen, I’m round. I am comprised mainly of circles, especially at the moment with the belly of doooooom.

My tits are getting bigger (which is RIDICULOUS because they were unmanageably big before I got pregnant [38 H, you guys. 38. H. and weighing in at 5.5lbs each.]) and have started leaking if I’m not wearing some sort of support, which is FUN because I ran out of support garments that actually fit about a month ago and have come up with absolutely zero decent replacements.

This is wreaking some merry havoc with my gender at the moment. I mean, pre-pregnancy an androgynous presentation was utterly out of my reach and I had figured out ways to live with that, these changes are just throwing it into starker relief.

I don’t experience massive dysphoria. At least, I experience emotional pain wrt feeling dysphoric in a very minute fashion. I figured out how to deal with that through my healing process from my eating disorder (on going healing process, but mostly at a maintenance level these days) and the pain is not reasserting itself.

Instead I’m annoyed that I see so few examples of FAAB gender-queer folk like myself that are not able to adopt a more masculinized/androgynous appearance in places set up to be welcoming to us. I realize that probably has more to do with how US culture frames body types and gender and what boxes we are all constrained within because of it, so no, I’m not mad at the spaces themselves but more the framework we are all stuck to. If parts of that framework fit you and work for you and ease your pain, that’s wonderful. I’m very happy for you because I do have an idea of what its like to be trying to be something you aren’t. I just don’t fit there, and I’m getting tired of trying to find the next best thing because its still the wrong thing. Its like trying to sleep with sand in my bed.

Anyone know where I can get a dustbuster?

Shai, 6 Weeks

Editor's Note: This piece was originally published on June 7th, 2011

(I pulled this idea from Blue Milk and her posts about and for her kids)

Dear Shai,*

Its been nearly 6 weeks since you were born, even though it feels much shorter than that. I want to keep track of the things that make the deepest impression on me since this time with you is flying by so fast.

So here are two lists: one of my five favorite things so far, and one of my five least favorite things.

5 least favorite things:

1. Losing my temper when you cluster feed in the early mornings
2. How paranoid I am that you will stop breathing
3. The diaper rash I caused by switching diaper brands
4. How sometimes you can only be comforted by me
5. How fast you’re growing

5 15 most favorite things:

1. Your milky smell
2. The way you resemble a little bird when you root around, looking for a nipple.
3. How desperately you want to be able to hold your head up
4. How surprised you look when you manage to do so
5. How you wrinkle your brow when you’re trying to focus on my face
6. Your little hand resting on my belly when you nurse
7. Your baby smiles when you dream
8. How you snuggle on me or your mommy
9. When you make what your mommy calls your “turtle face”
10. how soft you are
11. How relaxed you get when I hold you
12. The little glimpses I get of your voice
13. How vocal you’ve been from the moment you touched my skin
14. How absolutely in love with you I am
15. how fast you’re growing

*Not hir actual name, but the name that I will be using online when talking to or about hir.

Fat Mama

Editor's Note: this piece was originally posted January 31 2011

(Content notice for mentions of body hatred and eating disorders)

Inspired by this post.

I have been back and forth on posting pictures of my belly.

I’m at almost 6 months now, and my belly has definitely gotten poochy :) I love it.

One of my first worries about pregnancy had to do with my hatred of my body.

For years I would freak out over my belly, which at 185-200 lbs is usually able to sit against my thighs when I am seated. Even when I was ill, throwing up every day, unable to eat more than apple sauce and saltines for 30 days straight and had lost 40 lbs from the lack of anything but the barest sustenance I still had a little pouch of fat hanging beyond my stomach muscles. Especially when my cycle got going and I got bloated, I would have days when I was so uncomfortable in my own skin that i would literally tear my clothes off and freak out crying for hours.

The last thing I wanted during a wanted pregnancy was to be so filled with self hatred that I couldn’t stand the feeling of my own skin. I don’t have a religious set of beliefs strictly speaking, but I do believe that we carry intense emotions in our bodies. And it wasn’t fair of me to pass such intense hatred on to someone that does not have the power to get away from me. It goes beyond unfair. Its utterly wrong. I simply don’t have the right to impress my issues on someone that can’t choose to be near me.

That said, to my utter surprise and delight, I love my fat, pregnant belly. The bigger it gets, the happier I get. Every time I look at it in the mirror, every time I run my hands over it, or my partner falls asleep with her arm encircling it, I love it even more, because I can feel the movements of what will be our child. I feel so awash in a deep deep love for all of us, me, my gorgeous spouse and this little eventual person that is part of both of us. Its so strong sometimes that I almost can’t bear it. I can feel a deep deep connection to something primordial and ancient. There’s no room in there for all the false and poisonous shit about how gross and wrong a fat belly is.

I don’t know if there’s any poison left in me. I don’t know if there is any way for me to find out, but maybe this will help me draw out any remainders.

I'm Still Alive

so, I've been MIA for a while, mostly due to getting pregnant last fall and then adjusting to life with a baby in the most recent months. My pregnancy came with a significantly shortened attention span, which is saying something considering my ADD makes it tough to focus at times to begin with. (Hence my sporadic posting schedule prior to my attention span getting shot to hell)

For any readers that have kept me on their Google Reader feeds and wants to see more active posting from me, I do have a Tumblr that I manage to maintain. I do have some great pieces that I posted there about my pregnancy and the first few weeks of parenthood as a femme genderqueer person, so I'm planning on bringing them over here.

To my Tumblr friends that are clicking over to read my "real" blog, I apologize in advance for the cross-over. I like to think of it as a "greatest hits" re-run.

Anyways, dear anyone that still reads this space, thanks for sticking around :)

Not a solution

Shawna Forde Sentenced To Death For Double Murder In Arizona

Okay, I have some feelings about this.

I feel like I can appreciate the spirit in which this sentence was delivered but I cannot agree with the decision to put this woman to death.

First of all, in general, I don’t see the point of a system that tries to tell people that murder is bad by killing them for committing murder. I am not a supporter of state sponsored violence, especially with a state that is constructed so that only certain groups of people will ever be subject to their violence.

Second, killing one woman for her decision to kill innocent people does absolutely nothing to address the environment that condoned her actions until she stepped over the line into the states monopoly on inflicting violence on individuals.

It presents her death as some sort of solution to a problem that goes well beyond her and her individual decisions. And it allows those of us with the privilege to do so to continue framing racist violence as a problem only for solitary groups and people that we deem to be “over the top.” It allows us to remain secure in this concept of “real” racism that needs violence and death and blood to actually be a problem. And in the end, I personally am not a fan of wasting time and resources on faux-solutions.

Thousands of cuts

(possible trigger warning for discussions of forced genital modification and descriptions of people defending it)

Half of my family is Jewish, so one of the things my mother asked me when I revealed my pregnancy was if we were going to plan for a bris in the advent of having a child with a penis. I told her no, despite my desire to raise my child with an awareness of their Jewish heritage, I have no desire to subject them to unnecessary surgery. Its hir body, not mine and I will no more get a child with a penis circumcised than have surgery done to "correct" ambiguous genitalia.

I got into a big argument on New Year's with a bunch of people in my family about this. To be clear, I was asked if we were planning to circumcise (it was not presented as though it was assumed we would) and I just said "no" citing that I believed that the kid's body belongs to hir, especially once zie is no longer dependent on my body for survival so I don't feel I have the right to decide that for hir. This has been my stance on everything from forced sexual assignment surgery as referenced in the above paragraph to ear piercings in infancy. Suddenly I'm being forced to defend my stance on this to a roomful of people, some of whom I don't know very well if at all. (As a note, my mother was supportive of me, though not vehemently, and did apologize for bringing it up in a place where I would have to defend it to almost complete strangers.)

My two favorite arguments? "But, you'll have to teach them how to clean it!" Yes, I'm going to have to teach hir how to wipe hir ass too, provided zie is able to. This is different how? And "Well, I just think that cut penises are more attractive/cleaner-looking" Well, that's a wonderful argument. You think I should remove a part of my child's genitalia because you won't want to look at it if I don't? How about this? Don't like uncut penises? Don't look at my child's penis!

And all of this before anyone even knows if the kid HAS ONE YET. Hell, I don't even know!

And this is just part of it. I did realize that most of what was driving the arguments was that my stance made people feel like I was accusing them of being willing to abuse a child for no reason (to be fair, by virtue of explaining my stance, I was) and a feeling of insecurity in the men that were defending the practice. I actually had to tell one guy, who is the same age as my father and whom I had just met that evening, that he was allowed to feel comfortable about the state of his penis regardless of whether he had a choice in that state, but could he please stop trying to use religious law that I don't believe in to argue for me cutting my child.

What sent me reeling the most about the entire thing was that no one batted an eye at being presented with evidence that cutting off the foreskin is not in any way scientifically beneficial to a person that has no medical complications surrounding said foreskin. I mean, I present people with facts in the face of popular oppressive myths all the time. I have a file cabinet in my brain and a list of authors and research papers in my phone that I use as back-up because I believe/d that when presented with enough evidence of a specific "legitimate" type, people would be forced to listen and at the very least, I could plant a seed in their awareness and show them the direction that seed was growing in.

And with most of those discussions, I'm forced to use evidence that is often waved away as "opinion" because its not quantitative "hard" numbers. People regularly respond to my evidence with "well, I think that..." as though their opinion somehow cancels out decades, if not centuries of evolving scholarship, not to mention the detailed and documented experiences of the people actually living through the conditions being discussed. I was actually surprised how even the quantitative evidence was met with "well, I think that..." when confronting a structure like circumcision (good for you! you have an opinion! that flies in the face of both medical evidence and my child's right to bodily autonomy, but hey! We can pretend that those things are equal if it will get you to shut the fuck up and leave me alone.)

I realize I'm relying on a specific social construction of "logical science" as defined by an oppressive power structure to try and make people see the flaws in said power structure and the ways in which that structure is perpetuated based on "we said so" as opposed to anything that actually fits its own definition of "scientific evidence." Maybe that's why it doesn't work.

Its situations like this that make me wonder if there is any tool that will help people see the contradictions in the world around them that lead them to support oppressive power structures. Is just living in an awareness of those structures and living a life attempting to subvert as many as I can enough? Beyond enough, is it all that I can reasonably expect to do? Because it doesn't feel like enough. And it does feel like if I just stretch a little farther, try a little harder, mix just the right amount of information in just the right way, I'll find the cure. Like its hovering on the edge of my consciousness and I can see it in the corner of my minds eye but it disappears as soon as I turn towards it. Like trying to see yourself in a mirror with your eyes closed.