Burning Off

Sometimes I get upset about the prurient, salacious and incredibly reductive coverage of transgender issues in the media.

I know how complicated and nuanced they really are, know how much compassion is required to engage and understand the real challenges of a transgender life.

It is hard for me, yes, but I do understand that a blood letting is required around transgender.

The pain and stigma and freak calling is so strong around trans that there is no way to engage the real, tender issues until we burn off the fear and disquiet around transgender issues.

Until we get the cheap and nasty slurs, jokes and dismissal out in the open where it is visible to all as the toxic crap that has hurt so many transpeople over so many decades, we can’t move on.

The hidden snark needs to be brought out into the light so good people can see it as the bullshit and venom it really is.  We need to lance the boil around transgender, drain the pus, allowing the issues to air before we can heal.

Even as I write this my belly churns, tensing for the onslaught of crap and viciousness that is coming out of dark spaces all over the world.   It brings up the shit every transperson learned to internalize, attacks all of us, reducing our real lives to ignorant comments trying to destroy our legitimacy.

It has to come,though.   We need to get through this period to get to the other side, a place where trans is just trans, where the diversity and breadth of trans lives can be seen and valued, rather than having is all dismissed as weird, freaky perverts.

It’s like breaking the sound barrier, crashing through that wall that keeps the realities of trans hidden.   The shards will go everywhere, but afterwards, the freedom will stay around.

A smaller version of this has had to happen in every trans life.   To mature and own our own truth, the simple truth that trans expression has trans meaning, no matter how much we want to rationalize it, we have to do this release of fear and prejudices in our own life, letting go of expectations to find truth.

A huge blood letting is coming.   The beginning of it has been visible for a while.   It is going to be a nasty time but a liberating time.

Everyone heals in their own time and in their own way.  I suspect that is true of societies too.   Upheavals have to happen, shit has to be released and processed, before breakthroughs can become a part of everyday life.   It’s just part of the process.  This too will pass, as all things must.

That doesn’t mean it is ever easy or pleasant through, especially for tender, feminine hearted people who have always had deep empathy for suffering and loss.