Who gets to tell stories about transpeople? Clearly, anybody can tell those stories. In a culture of free expression, there are few limits to the stories we tell about anyone. The stories they tell about people like us, though, often feel icky, manipulative and unfair. They set us up to be the enemy, the other, … Continue reading Twisted Stories
To have genuine bodhicitta is to burn with love in a world you cannot fix. — Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel Taking that journey to enlightenment is a one way trip. A bell cannot be un-rung and you cannot un-know what you have learned. That was one of the last laments Christine left me with: “Why didn’t … Continue reading Pursuing Positive
The archetype is clear. Society needs someone to do the dirty work, handling challenges far beyond the comfort of the normative. Those who end up being selected to do that work are valued, put on a pedestal. They are not, though, allowed back into polite society. They are tainted, corrupted by their service. They carry … Continue reading The Returned
“We didn’t understand how creating radical us vs them boundaries would dehumanize the other, leading to abuse and violence.” When people who feel debased, marginalized and dehumanized decide that the remedy for the pain they feel is acting out against those they have identified as the enemy, as people not worth of respect or dignity, … Continue reading Dehumanizing Reflection
As transwomen, who do we have to justify our choices to? Whose attacks and questions are so valid that we have to include them in the explanation of self we offer to the world? For Hari Nef, justifying herself to the women’s studies crowd, the self-professed feminists was worth doing a TEDx talk over To … Continue reading Who Judges?
“We are transgender people at a certain time in history,” as I said in my 1995 IFGE Keynote speech. From where I stand, it looks like that time is period of reactionary separation. Technology, especially digital communication, has sped up the flow of information in a way that makes the pace of change astoundingly fast, … Continue reading A Certain Time In History
WordPress has an automatic engine that adds a “Related Posts” section at the end of entries, so one of the few people who read “Sprightly Voices” chose to follow a link to a 2014 post titled “Horribly Beautiful Voice.” From there they followed an internal link to a 1995 entry on my old site, “The … Continue reading Ecstatic
So, like, once, when I was in like tenth grade, I was talking to a guidance counsellor about my work at MIT HSSP, a Saturday program where college students taught classes for high schoolers. It was part of the whole caring about education, a way to get some teaching experience for undergrads. For me, though, … Continue reading A Scapegoat’s Value
From the first trans support group meeting I ever attended, I found it easier to talk to the women born female than the very masculine people, no matter how they were dressed. The premise of crossdresser societies was always the premise of masquerade; down deep they were really men, straight men, who loved women and … Continue reading Immigrant Costs
It was 1995 and we were doing one of the first presentations on trans for the local lesbian and gay centre. My co-presenters, Ari Istar Lev and Moonhawk River Stone, insisted that we each introduce ourselves. I resisted. I wanted the content of what I was offering to be engaged, not some assertion of standing … Continue reading Living Liminal
The big war for transpeople is over being real. Some of us fight hard to make it clear that our trans expression is unreal, is a costume, just drag or cross dressing. We are really who we were told we were when people first saw our birth genitals and nothing will ever change that. Some … Continue reading Reality Wars
After a book on the “Gay Revolution” which laid out a narrative version of the fight for LGbt rights since WWII, I was struck by how it wasn’t the stories that told the tale. While the individual events are a key part of the process, the power of change was not in the specific fights … Continue reading Revolution Beyond Fear
Pope Francis recently issued a new teaching on the “Joy Of Love.” In it, he didn’t seek to change the thoughts, the doctrine of his church, didn’t seek to offer new rules that would change the intellectual stance that is held by conservative minds. Rather, he sought to speak of the value, importance and joy … Continue reading Joy of Smarts, Joy Of Love
Whenever two or three are gathered. . . There are times when I feel the need to invoke the sacred, to call and respond, offering and receiving, connecting with a higher power. For me, the one of the most important and most difficult things is learning to let go and trust in a power, a … Continue reading Sacred Rites
Jesus Loves You, but everyone else thinks that you’re an asshole. — Schoolyard Taunt If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. — Gloom, Despair and Agony On Me When you feel forsaken by a world that seems to want to find any reason to slap people like you, losing sight … Continue reading Forsaken Rebirth
Whatever you do, don’t ooze. Don’t flow, don’t wiggle, don’t shimmer. Motion, you see, even the rippling of light or the shifting of colour just makes them a bit crazy. They like their perspective fixed, their expectations solid, their boundaries unchallenged. Transformation, transcendence, trans anything isn’t in their vision. It makes you too intense, too … Continue reading In A Box
Women are often amused by the presence of a guy in a dress because they feel that, finally, some man is understanding how the other half lives. “Oooh!” they say “he’s wearing a bra! Don’t you hate bras? And now you know what it is like to have to wear those shoes! Did you have … Continue reading Goose, Gander
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
wondering what I would say to a group of women at a self-help weekend… I have a question for you. Do you ever hear a voice, somewhere deep inside you, that whispers you are much, much more than what your friends, your family and the rest of the world sees you as being? Does it … Continue reading Trusting Within
Where is the power of transgender in the world? Is it in our political stance or our emotional one, in our battling or in our kindness? When we gather in trans spaces nowadays, either on the internet or in person, we are usually encouraged to think about our trans identity as a political force, each … Continue reading Kindness
Callan 