Search Results for: fight

I know how to fight with others. I fight fair —  always listening close, acknowledging good points, being willing to change my stance — and I fight fun, with kindness, wit and grace.    Instead of trying to silence or erase, just pointing out what I see as error and demanding beliefs like mine, I offer … Continue reading Good Fight

Trans is a losing proposition. Ask anyone who resists emerging as trans, who advises resistance, or even those who have emerged and they will tell you that you should not, cannot emerge without enduring loss. You may lose family or friends,  you may lose your job or career, you may lose relationship opportunities and reproductive … Continue reading Fighting While Trans

I was just in a scrap on an internet forum where I have participated for over a decade.  It’s about technical stuff, and it is a model of decorum, but one hothead decided they needed to spank me because while I addressed my experience with the topic of a thread, I didn’t note that a … Continue reading Fight Blitz

Jeremy Clarkson recently took a hit on Twitter because he wrote, in his usual blokey way, that transgender issues are driving him nuts.   He defended himself, though, because he ended the column by saying that the experience of being trans must be awful and offering a solution that he could get behind. His suggestion is … Continue reading Fighting Over Other

The first rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club. If you do talk, the rubes won’t understand.   They will try and make it about them and their assumptions, expectations and fears. Worse, they may feel the need to intervene in ways that devalue the purpose of fight club. The first … Continue reading Fight Club

If I fight for you, will you fight for me? The Danish series “Rita,” by Christian Thorpe, is centered around a fierce teacher, and available on Netflix. Rita is a fighter, ready say out loud what others just think, ready to engage anyone with a sprit of justice and commitment. “She is easy to love … Continue reading If I Fight For You

I read what transgender activists share on the internet. Most of these stories are about places where transpeople have to fight to have their rights, their identity and their truth affirmed in a world which has the tradition of affirming birth sex based stereotypes over individual expression. They are stories of transpeople fighting to be … Continue reading Fight Like That

The book “NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity” by Steve Silberman has gotten some very bad reviews on Amazon. They are from people who just completely disagree with the author’s take that we shouldn’t work to make people on the autistic spectrum “normal” but rather to see their differences as just … Continue reading Infighting

If where we focus our energy defines us, then most of us are defined not by what we do but rather by what we resist doing. The friction of resistance, working to turn drives into waste heat rather than scary change, trying to keep us fixed and safe and small and under the radar, is … Continue reading Resistance Fighter

Women fight. Women fight for their families, women fight for right, women fight for their own status, women fight for change, women even fight for fun. This is a world of struggle, and that means we all fight, no matter how pretty we look. In fact, being pretty is often a weapon women use in … Continue reading Fighting In Heels

“Oh, you’re great.  You sacrifice so much,” my father told me, his words dripping with sarcasm. I am in a full autonomic fight or flight reaction around my sister these days. But I resist it to do what is required, errands that involve driving her around and such. It feels like I am being beaten, … Continue reading Fight, Flight, Die

Could you walk the catwalk?  Could you get up there and look fierce under the hot lights in a flashy outfit, every eye on the place scanning for any flaw or failure?  Could you take the pressure, the scrutiny, the judgement? If you can do that, could you do it alone, putting together your own outfit, your … Continue reading Dogfight

We know our experience of the past. We know what hurt us, know what we desired, know what we put up with, know what we feel we lost. Imagining a future, then, becomes imagining how to rectify and recompense our past. The future, though, is a new world.   The reality it offers comes with new … Continue reading Past Or Future?

One of the things I added to support group meetings, along with beach balls, was applause. When someone told a story about doing something bold and brave, I started the applause, with the room quickly joining in. It’s a quick and simple way for the group to affirm courage, both in the storyteller and in … Continue reading Spiny

As to how the “Safe Space” open mic evening went, I wasn’t asked if I wanted to present when I walked in; no open sign-up sheet.   Just before the presentations started I asked for their e-mail address to the “Ornery” piece.   About a hour and a half later, the MC looks at the … Continue reading Discomfort Zones

Can you understand, categorize and define me by looking at people with whom I share one attribute? People identified as male at birth who choose to wear women’s clothing; aren’t they all alike?   Know one and you know them all? It’s amazing how many who would hate to be pigeonholed because they share an attribute … Continue reading Identity Fail

I thank God for the gifts she gave me. I curse her — with wit — over the situations I was in where I needed to use them, to develop them, to master them. Everyone has healing gifts, unique skills to offer the community, filling needs and creating better. Only those who have had to … Continue reading Gift Of A Lifetime

All you need to do to be a prophet is to listen more to the still, small voice of your creator, leading from the voice that transcends nice, compliant normalcy. This doesn’t necessarily make you a good prophet, as the voice you hear might be twisted, dark, ego laden, full of pain & vengeance and … Continue reading Price Of Prophecy

Girls learn early that the best way to enact the woman they want to be is to copy women who seem to embody their own aspirations.   Gender may be a copy with no original, as Butler said, but the copying, the copying is an essential and driving part of womanhood. In the end, women have … Continue reading Alluring Aspirations

“Look at you, a grown ass man fighting with children!” Those children appeared to be a pair of twenty something lesbians, the more butch of whom had driven her minivan with a “Bernie For President” bumper sticker around me in the facing traffic lane as I waited for the car in front of me in … Continue reading The Entitlement Of Children