Why I Will Not, In Fact, "Express Gratitude For People Who Are Patriots"...Even Though My Dad Was One

I'm a seventeen-year-old high school junior. I'm also bisexual, genderfluid, pagan, neurodivergent, and female.

That first part means that I'm applying to college.

The rest of it means I have a bone to pick with conservatives - you know, the people who have denied me the right to worship freely, the right to get married to anyone but a "man" (meaning, someone with a dick...even if "he" is actually female), the right to safe medical care, the right to not be discriminated against in the workplace, the right to live my life without being harassed, the right to control over my own body, and even the right to live.

So when my Republican parents - including my mom, whom I am by the way out to as a lesbian as of yesterday, despite her insistence that I need to "be sure that this is what I'll really want for the rest of my life before I make a choice like that" -  found a conservative scholarship online, they decided that I was going to write it.

No. No. I will never be conservative, and I will not pretend I'm something I'm not even for a scholarship. I get that money is tight (according to my parents, even though we're actually a lot richer than so many kids even at my school), but I will not do anything that "promotes conservative values" and talks about "what it means to be an *cough white straight cis enabled male Christian cough cough* American". Because according to way too many of those Americans, my sexuality and gender - not like they'll actually deign to learn the difference between the two - are not valid and come from the "devil."

I have made it as clear as I possibly can to my mom that I'm queer without actually having sex with a girl in front of her or something. There's no way she can't know how conservatives have denied me - denied her as a woman - so many fundamental rights. The way so many of them believe our personhood is up for debate. I don't understand how any marginalized person could support that kind of ideology, but I don't have to be a part of it and I will fight it. I am a person and just as deserving of equality as those who have stripped my rights from me.

And then my mom, after I snapped at her that I was liberal and always would be, pulled the Dad card.

You see, my biological father was a conservative and a member of the military. He loved Ronald Reagan, collected Republican political pins, went to church every Sunday and dragged a hyperactive little kid along with him. I don't know if he was queerphobic, and it breaks my heart that he might very well have seen his own child as...something horrible...might even have placed me in the abusive, psychologically damaging atrocity that fundamentalist Christians have the nerve to call "conversion therapy". But until I die myself, I will never know for sure if he would have done any of that.

He died when I was six, before I ever knew that not every relationship has one man and one woman. That not everyone falls neatly into the categories of "man" and "woman." And when I was five years old and tried to tell him I was transgender without having any words for the way I felt, he told me I was confused. Had he been alive today, he may very well have ended up changing his ways - if not for his own sake or anyone else's, then for my sake. But I'll never know.

I can live my own life to the fullest. I can love myself exactly as I am, and empower other people who are disrespected in the ways I am or in ways that I am not to love themselves and to be loved by others. But sometimes, knowing that my dad may very well have been prejudiced against important parts of my identity makes it really hard to do that.

Which just makes it that more screwed-up that my mother brought my dead father and his military service into the conversation. That's messed up and disrespectful and absolutely not okay.

She insisted that I write this conservative essay, promoting the views of people who don't think I deserve to be viewed a a person, as a gesture of gratitude to the Armed Forces, because "People RISK THEIR LIVES AND DIE for this country! You will express gratitude for people who are patriots!"

No. No I won't, because even if my dad was one of these people, I will never be. White, Christian, straight, cis, and enabled isn't what America looks like. In my eyes, that's not what it means to be an American.

Martin Luther King Day and Colorist Racism

As my fellow Americans and possibly some Canadians know, it is Martin Luther King Day. And a lot of my posts lately have been in anticipation of that. But I couldn't pick a really concise topic for this particular post until, a few hours ago, I was on Trevorspace (the social networking site for queer youth that is, lo and behold, not Tumblr) and saw a new thread title in the forums: "Being a different color".

Curious, I clicked on it, and read the message of a relatively new user who was calling himself Little who explained that he was one of the only black students at his mostly-white school and that he was thinking of bleaching his skin to fit in.

And that really sucks. Why should light skin be so celebrated in our screwed-up society? Every time a black girl tells me that someone told her she's "pretty for a dark girl", as if dark-skinned black women aren't beautiful as their dark-skinned selves, I just want to punch whoever said that to her.

She's beautiful, with and regardless of her dark skin, and it's absolutely horrible that she has been told otherwise. Her skin is a part of who she is. Little's skin is a part of who he is, and it's an awesome part. The Civil Rights movement really helped strengthen the idea of 'the darker the berry, the sweeter the juice' but we still have a lot of work to do.

That said, I'm white and can't answer for people of color on colorism and racism, because I've never experienced those things. So I'm providing you guys with this poem. Because while I can't, Tova can.

Hopefully, with with the advocacy and honest courage of black writers like Tova Charles, and the celebration of black voices in the media and in real life, Dr. King's dream will indeed come true.

That hasn't happened yet, but happy Martin Luther King Day.

Dear Allies...

Like many other marginalized people, I have had issues with prejudice. Not okay, but also not surprising.

What is kind of surprising is that the aggression I've faced from people who are privileged in ways that I am not sometimes comes from people who claim to respect the communities to which I belong or to be allies to us. I've seen a straight cis girl enter a safe space for queer youth and say that if we were offended by queerphobic jokes, that was our own fault and we should just choose not to listen. When I called out this fanfiction writer on their usage of an ableist slur, they proceeded to inform me that I, a neurodivergent person who has actually been called said slur, was being oversensitive, that I was attacking them, and that I had no right to call them ableist...because they don't think disabled people - and, regardless of what abled people might think, there are people who identify as disabled  - are a burden on society. Then there was Paula Deen's usage of the n-word (I'm white, but I was pissed off and rightfully so. I don't care what the guy was doing, and frankly I doubt she's even telling the truth about the circumstances - she's white and therefore she does not get to use the n-word. The fact that she does and has not apologized for this makes her racist. Period).

So! Let's get on with the post, shall we? 

1. You do not get a fucking cookie.

It seems like some allies assume that because they support a marginalized community, that community is somehow obligated to shower them with respect or make special allowances for them - what is known in the online activist community as 'ally cookies'. No one is going to give you an ally cookie and you don't deserve one. You aren't special for being a decent human being.

2. You do not get to decide if you are an ally.

Okay, it might seem rude to tell someone this, but when people disrespect me - and my quasi allies often have - I reserve the right to be rude. I reserve the right to judge. I reserve the right to tell people off, to use profanity to get a point across, and to be a pain in the ass. And I should do these things, because when people are being problematic, it needs to be made clear that their behavior is unacceptable. I will call them out and I won't really care if that bothers them. If they insistently disrespect my identity, dominate my safe spaces, and refuse to listen when I or others like me speak, I do not consider them my ally.

Privileged people, you do not get to decide if you are an ally. The community you are supporting does.

3. Be respectful when entering safe spaces.

I am a member of a few different Facebook groups dominated by people of color, and marketed towards people of color. The Official Black Poetry Cafe is one of my favorites, and I definitely recommend it to any people of color or allies to people of color who write poetry. Fantastic group, and very talented poets.

Now, it's okay that I, a white intersectional feminist, am in a poetry group dominated by black people (though it is open to all races) because I do not make assumptions about the other writers, because I am respectful, because I am careful not to dominate the discussion, because I acknowledge that I am privileged, because I respect that the group is their safe space and I am a guest, and because I know when to...

4. Shut up and listen.

This is yet another thing that many allies seem to have a problem with. It is something that I used to have a problem with.

 It's understandable; no one wants to acknowledge that they have the potential to systemically dehumanize, devalue, and demean a minority group. No one wants to be the bad guy. But that doesn't mean getting defensive when a marginalized person talks about the oppression they have experienced from a privileged community with which you identify is okay either. Just let them talk, let yourself be called out, and learn to apologize after being called out. Be sensitive to other people's experiences, admit that you don't know everything, and that just because something doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it never happens.

5. You are not part of the community.

This especially seems to be a problem with allies of the queer community. That girl I mentioned at the beginning of the post repeatedly insists that she is part of the queer community, despite being straight, cisgender, and dyadic. The reasoning is that she is an ally.

No. Just no. This girl is not queer. She is not part of the queer community. She is a (self-proclaimed) ally to the queer community, though because of her tendency to ignore her own privilege, consistently be defensive when called out, insist that we amend our statements (i.e. homophobes, not straight people), and to dominate conversations, I, as a queer person, do not consider her an ally. I will not consider her an ally until she apologizes for her behavior and makes an effort to not allow said behavior to continue.

Allies, when one of the marginalized people you support informs you that they don't consider you part of their community, don't get angry. Don't get defensive. The fact is, you aren't a part of their community, and it's incredibly appropriative and disrespectful to say that being an ally means that you are.

6. You are privileged. Acknowledge it.

Like I said, nobody wants to acknowledge their own privilege. Confronting the systemic power you have over other people, based on something as vital and integral as race or religion, and doing everything you possibly can to destroy that power isn't a comfy experience. It's not an easy one. But it's a necessary one, and unless you can do that, you're a bad ally.

The people you are supporting are going to call you out on your privilege and point out any bias you have because of said privilege. If you can't acknowledge that, you're just going to make people feel disrespected and ignored in their own safe spaces, and that's not okay. That's not being a good ally. So I'll offer up this article as a guide to all things privilege. Really, the entire site is just a fantastic guide in general.

So, allies, just follow the guide and...and it is really late right now, and I need sleep. Until next time.

Names

Like most trans* (the asterick indicates the entire transgender spectrum) people, questions are complicated for me. Questions like "Are you a boy or a girl?" (unfortunately, I haven't been able to make myself look that androgynous since I was about eleven, but I still have to deal with annoying cissexist forms with their stupid little gender boxes) and "What kind of clothing do you like?" are easy for most cis people, but when you're genderfluid, the answers to those questions aren't so clean-cut.

Another question with an answer that isn't so clean-cut is "What is your name?"

If it's a formal setting, like a college interview, I will say Elizabeth. The annoyingly feminine name I'd always hated, handed down from my great-grandmother, when I was little because I thought it sounded like a little old lady at a tea party. When I was eleven, I got my first period and started overeating because the changes were supposed to be happening to a girl and that's not who I was. And after that, as I grew bigger and bigger, hiding behind too-big shirts and hating my body, hating the fat that was simply part of the wholeness that was me. It was me, and it was part of my identity. It spoke of the emotional scars of body hate, of looking down at my chest and hating what I saw because I knew what other people saw. As if other people have any right to dictate who I am, to teach me to hate myself. In those years, I hated Elizabeth because it was feminine, It was lace and silk and femininity, and I was hoodies and jeans and cotton, looking again and again down at my chest and wishing desperately that I was flat before the word binder even entered my vocabulary. I looked down at my chest and hated what I saw.

I need to work on that. Because while I still want a binder, while I'm still learning to love my body with all its monthly bloody cramping glory and D-cup breasts, preparing me for a child that I will likely never give birth to, there are times when I look down at my body, with its softness and curves and fatness and hate it even though it is mine. I'm learning to get past that, but I need to work on loving my body. I probably always will. That's part of being transgender, but I still wouldn't trade any part of my queerness for anything because like my body, my queerness is a part of my identity that I hated and denied myself for so long. But like my body, I'm learning to love my queerness because it's part of me. And it is a part that I need to love, everyone else's opinion of it be damned.

I'm learning to love myself, and with that self-love I can look people in the eye and say with the boldness, the determination, the courage of someone who is loved and loving and has the braveness of love inside of them, "You do not need to be in my life." And if they can't respect me for who I am, they won't be in my life.

Body love rant aside, let's continue with the post.

When I was fourteen, I frantically started making people call me Bess. It was the most androgynous short form of Elizabeth that I could think of, though at the time this wasn't a conscious factor in the decision-making process. At the time, I hadn't discovered words like genderqueer and genderfluid. It wouldn't be until I was sixteen that I discovered the words that described my life story. It wouldn't be until I was seventeen - last month - that I wrote a paper on nonbinary issues and basically came out to the teacher by mentioning my own experiences as a genderqueer person.

And it was also only a few months ago that I realized that the androgynous name I'd loved so much was actually pretty feminine...even if the femininity was only a social construct. So much about gender roles, especially in America, with its queerphobia and its white-normative, western-normative social conventions (I once read a book set in Indonesia where the men wore clothes that most Americans would call 'dresses' and had flowers in their hair. It was awesome.), is a social construct.

I told myself this and it was true, but that didn't change the fact that I still didn't feel completely comfortable in my own skin and my name was partly why. Experimenting with androgynous names, I finally found one that fit: Ari.

That doesn't mean I'm going to straight-up stop going by Bess, but it would be really great if people could call me Ari sometimes. Just to acknowledge that they respect my transgender identity and acknowledge that having breasts and bleeding from my crotch once a month and being able to give birth - pretty much the only good things, to me, about being afab (assigned female at birth) are that a) masculinity is more socially acceptable in afabs than femininity is in amabs because fuck logic and fuck this misogynistic culture we live in and b) the knowledge that my body is totally badass - don't necessarily make me female. Not only female, anyway.

I've started using the name Ari on various social networking sites. Not Facebook (yet, at least) because too many people would be confused. But my profile on NaNoWriMo says 'My name is Ari and I'm okay with female, male, or neutral pronouns' and my profile on Trevorspace lists my name as 'Bess or Ari.' And my fanfiction.net account says 'Ari' under the name section.

I have a friend who is also genderqueer - she doesn't really like labels, but she prefers 'masculine' or androgynous presentation pretty consistently, doesn't have any traditionally feminine interests, and got really upset when telling me her mom was talking about making her shop only in the section marketed to women - and people call her by masculine names (they alternate between masculine names and her birth name) because of this. So I'm hoping it works.

It's Not Just One Life

While surfing YouTube, I came across a racist comment about Michael Brown's murder that portrayed the white citizens of Ferguson, MO, as innocent victims. The comment basically said that people are making a big fuss over nothing. As if the murder of an innocent man was nothing.

I hate people sometimes.

But...I have abilities that I can use to be an ally to people of color. I have white privilege, which means that in so many circles, I will be taken more seriously than a person of color would. My white privilege means that my grandparents and great-grandparents were granted access to high-quality education and high-paying jobs; that I was born into a wealthy family and live in a wealthy neighborhood, less than two miles away from one of the most rigorous and supportive public high schools in the state.

It isn't right or fair that I live the cushy life I do. I don't deserve this life. But I can use it to help change the world, and that is important. That is why I wrote this poem. It's called It's Not Just One Life.


It wasn't just one life. It was the life of Michael Brown, of Eric Garner, of Trayvon Martin, of every black boy who has been shot by police. It is the life of Tyra Hunter, the black woman who died of medical neglect in 1995. It is the life of every trans woman of color who has been murdered because society hates anyone who doesn't fit into its bullshit box called "normal" well guess what THERE IS NO NORMAL!

 It is the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated because he dared to fight for his people's right to equality. It is the life of every black woman raped in slavery, of every man whipped, of every person devalued or killed because they weren't white. It is the life of every Cherokee who died on the Trail of Tears, every Chinese worker on the Continental Railroad forced to work under crappy conditions for low wages because WHITE PEOPLE decided they didn't deserve any better, it is the life of every child murdered in Central America because they weren't allowed a safer place to stay, every Rom killed in the Holocaust.

It is the life of everyone and anyone murdered because their identity didn't match up to what the kyriarchy felt it "should" be, as if white straight rich Christian cis enabled male is somehow the ideal. It's not the ideal. It's not normal, but because you fall into one or more of those categories, you have been allowed to say that it is the ideal. You have been allowed to pretend it was JUST ONE LIFE.

It is not just one life. It never has been. But maybe we can stop the body count increasing.

In Which I Totally Pwn a Sizeist, Misogynistic Writer

As I'm sure many of you know, I have a profile on the fandom website, fanfiction.net. I was scrolling through the Fairly Oddparents fanfiction archive when I found this writer.

As a nonbinary person, I'm reluctant to gender this person, whose identity I don't know. However, problematic language like "I like fat chubby female bellys" and their fetishization of lesbians and fat women indicates to me that they are a straight, cisgender, thin male.

In any case, this person seems incredibly ignorant and upholds discriminatory tendencies and misogyny in their writing, which I simply can not accept. So I called them out on it here. Look for my screen name, powerofthepen123, and that one really long review.

Of course, I can't make claims like "fetishization of lesbians and fat women" without proper evidence.

1. They write gay pairings, but with only femslash. There are no gay male pairings under the screen name Squishy Belly Lover (to be fair, I haven't written any major gay male pairings either, but I have included ace representation and made the relationship between my Firelight OCs, Aiya Singh and Blue Murphy, romantic and healthy and freaking not abusive or manipulative. I made it somewhat like a real relationship that would appeal to real teen lesbians, drawing upon the qualities that I look for in potential girlfriends as well as the experiences and stories I've heard from other young women-loving women). In their stories that include femslash, the characters seem to have little to nothing in common, to have no or very little sexual chemistry in the canon, or both.

2. The "romance" in these pairings, if you can call it romance when they're not really doing anything to make the women realistically develop a relatable romantic relationship, seems to consist mostly of the two lesbian characters going out to all-you-can-eat buffets while one character raids the whole thing and the other watches, almost drooling with lust as her girlfriend gains weight. The fat woman is somehow fine with this fetishization; realistically this is at least plausible because there's a myth in queer subculture that cis lesbians are unable to uphold the patriarchy, so it might not occur to these fat lesbians to call out their thin, cis girlfriends on the objectification they are perpetrating. However, this objectification is not portrayed realistically, and the potential opportunity to educate readers about misogyny in the lesbian community seems to fly right over Squishy Belly Lover's head.

3. The lesbian sex in SBL's stories seems like it came from fetishistic lesbian porn. As a sex-positive feminist, I support sex workers and that includes porn stars, but so much of pornography (excluding gay male) is marketed toward straight men. That includes lesbian porn, which seems to be more about performing for men than realistic sexual enjoyment for actual lesbians. Most lesbians I've talked to that have watched and/or read porn find lesbian porn unenjoyable. 

I've read lesbian romance that included sex scenes, and was often left feeling like said sex wasn't truly intended to cater to my desires. Of course, as a transgender fat person, I have issues with my body even though I'm trying to improve my relationship with it. But, body issues aside, I do know what I want in sex, and the heterosexism invading lesbian porn isn't it.

I'm a lesbian and I'm proud of being one. There are a lot of great things about being a queer woman (as I mentioned in the post where I came out as genderfluid, woman is one of the labels I identify with), but fetishization by straight men isn't one of them. If you'd like to read about how porn can be more feminist, check out this article.

4. When describing the appearance of the fat women in his stories, Squishy Belly Lover rarely goes beyond aspects of their appearances related to their weight. They make it clear in their profile that they find bigger women sexually attractive, but it's a fine line between having a preference and fetishizing a marginalized group of people (i.e. the harassment APIA, Native American, and Latina women face from straight white men). Judging by Squishy's stories, they don't seem to realize that this is fetishization, let alone that said fetishization is problematic.

I don't want to be desexualized for being fat, but I will also not tolerate benevolent sizeism. I am a human being and I deserve to be valued and seen as beautiful, just as anyone else does. Not despite my fatness. Not because of my fatness. But with, and regardless of, my fatness. I am a fat queer woman and I am beautiful. I am valued and valuable, though certain people - including Squishy Belly Lover - might not treat people like me that way.

5. Squishy Belly Lover presumes to understand the experiences of fat women and lesbians - clearly, they haven't actually talked to any fat women or lesbians about this. Their work practically reeks of thin privilege and male privilege, another thing that leads me to believe they are a thin, cis male. They are not a woman. They are not fat. They are not gay. If they are going to write stories about fat, gay women - and they should, because fat gay women deserve to be written about - they need to be sensitive and listen to the experiences of actual fat, gay women in order to write these stories respectfully.



Media inclusivity is important. So is using a privileged voice responsibly. It is up to us, as privileged writers, to do so.

For Michael Brown

One form of discrimination I've never talked about on this blog - or almost never talked about - is racism. And that's not okay, because if we don't talk about it, racism won't end. So this is for Michael Brown.

For Michael Brown

Just another black boy

That's the justification

The defensive statement

For the devaluing of his life

But Darren Wilson didn't mean to...

To murder

That's what it was

And don't you dare say differently

Devalued, dehumanized, demeaned

All the jokes about Ferguson

At the expense of Michael Brown

And every other black boy who has been killed

Don't you realize that their lives matter?

THEY ARE PEOPLE

And they were murdered

The violence needs to end

"Why do you need to make everything about race all the time?"

Because that's the way YOU made it

That's the way WE made it because we are white

It IS about race

Don't you dare say white privilege doesn't exist

Not when we have those boys' blood on our hands

And Michael Brown's death goes unavenged

For Michael Brown

For the sake of every black person I know,

Every person whose voice is silenced

Their blood spilled because of their race

For every person who has ever had the word "n***er"

Screamed at them from a car

For those people

For Michael Brown,

The boy whose life is devalued because he was black

The boy whom white people STILL see as less than human

The violence needs to END

Leelah Alcorn

Okay, I think most of you can tell I would have strong feelings about Leelah Alcorn and her suicide.

To catch you up to date: Leelah was a young trans woman - my age, actually - who was raised in an abusive fundamentalist Christian family. Her parents isolated her from society, refused to acknowledge that she was a girl, and took her to psychologically damaging conversion therapy to turn her into their "perfect little straight Christian boy." Leelah posted her suicide note on Tumblr, explaining her situation and pleading with all who read it to "fix society" and realize that with so many young trans people committing suicide every year, something's fucked up. She then walked out into traffic and was struck by a tractor trailer, killing her instantly. I never knew Leelah, but her death is one of the saddest things I've ever heard about.

Apparently, not even Leelah's mom, Carla Wood Alcorn, who is part of the reason her daughter died, has taken her daughter's message or feelings as anything more than a delusion. Nor does Mrs. Alcorn seem to have any respect for her daughter. I've already summed up what I know of her abusive behavior toward her daughter - the behavior that made Leelah feel that death would be better than living the way she had been.

This is the Facebook message Mrs. Alcorn posted on the day of her daughter's suicide: My sweet 16-year-old son, Joshua Ryan Alcorn went home to heaven this morning. He was out for an early morning walk and was hit by a truck. Thank you for the messages and kindness and concern you have sent our way. Please continue to keep us in your prayers.

So. Many. Things. First, Alcorn is misgendering and disrespecting her daughter, even after Leelah came out to her as transgender and had already asked for permission to transition, by using the wrong name and pronouns. Second, she is ignoring the fact that Leelah's death was a suicide - and why Leelah felt the need to commit suicide. Third, Leelah was seventeen when she died. What kind of parent doesn't know their own kid's age? Fourth, she is disrespecting Leelah's beliefs as an atheist. Leelah didn't believe in God, and although I personally believe Leelah is in eternal paradise right now, it was wrong and disrespectful of her mother to discuss the religion that motivated so many people to disrespect her when announcing Leelah's death.

But we shan't waste more time on the abusive little snot known as Carla Wood Alcorn, yes? She doesn't deserve it. What we do need to do is answer Leelah's cry for change by doing these things:

1. Make sure that Leelah's story is not forgotten.

2. Respect transgender people as valid and valued.

3. Outlaw conversion therapy.

4. Keep a better eye out for child abuse, especially of neurodivergent (because Leelah had clinical depression) and LGBTQIPAD+ kids, and make sure that abuse is ended immediately,

5. Teach about gender diversity in schools. The earlier, the better. Kids can handle things better than you'd think. It's their parents who can't.

6. Campaign for Leelah's gravestone to say Leelah Alcorn, NOT Joshua Alcorn.

Rest in peace, Leelah Alcorn. We will fulfill your dying wish and we will bring change.