Yearly Archives: 2020

Opportunity Cost

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I think I have tended to attract people who are insecure in their gender or sexuality, who see me as a novel sort of toy to work out their issues but then freak out when I turn out to be a person with her own ideas about things—and also freak out at what I threaten to reflect about them. It’s like, they use me to explore some unspoken dimension of themselves then—well. The response has had a different balance in each case, but there’s this baseline weirdness and anxiety that I guess I always saw but never quite understood or connected from person to person, that small collection of others I’ve allowed close to me in that way.

Ergo, this inevitable controlling behavior. They didn’t really see me as an independent person to start with; I was just an accessory to them. But now? After they’ve realized I’m technically my own human being with my own agency? Now, I was a dangerous, rogue accessory who might at any time, intentionally or otherwise indicate what they were really like, and then Everyone Would Know.

I guess it was always obvious there was something “off” about me, leading people who had their hang-ups that they dared not voice to project their own interpretations into that and go, hmm, there’s some fucking plausible deniability right there, in mobile form. And what a rube! What an opportunity.

White Christmas

  • Reading time:6 mins read

It is of course Known that HRT changes sexual function. The way it’s usually described, because of course it is, is in pathological terms—which is dumb. Dumb, and misleading, and potentially harmful for so many reasons. Not everyone’s got the same interests or ideas or life goals, yo. Sometimes things just are what they are, and what meaning they carry is what you read into them.

It’s worth stressing that people are people, that there’s little meaningful difference between the Big Two sexes as popularly defined, and that what little difference there is comes late in natal development (or even after!). Everyone is carrying basically the same hardware. Whereas things get lightly specialized in terms of size, placement, and some high-level utility, they are equivalent in purpose and function—because they’re the same parts; just baked a little differently at the very end. so the real difference isn’t hardware; it’s software.

The penis and the clitoris; same organ. prostate and skein’s gland; same basic structure. The testes have a channel through the prostate—and it turns out that the vestigial equivalents of the vagina and uterus are located in the prostate. It’s all there; just differently specialized. So what specialized their form to suit their mature functions, and what continues to guide that function? Hormones, of course. Your penis knows it’s a penis because of the message it’s sent. Your skein’s gland knows to get lubricating because of a chemical beacon.

And—yes, broadly speaking the feminine parts are gonna be told to focus on lubrication, to keep on going even through orgasm—so there signal there is about a sort of opening of the floodgates (both literally and figuratively, with the ongoing free full-bodied sensations and so on). The masculine parts get the opposite instruction. Their task is all about building up pressure for launch. Most of the fluid and sensation there is reserved for a brief moment, after which the mission is done and it’s not only difficult but sometimes physically painful to continue.

So what happens if your specialized hardware starts receiving a different set of signals? Well, again technically it’s all the same stuff. It’s going to be more or less compatible with whatever commands you throw at it. After a brief reorientation, it will learn to obey the software it’s fed—at least, as well as it can. It’s like, you take a black mage and reclass them as a berserker, you may have a curve to deal with.

So in regard to changed function, it’s also fairly well-recorded how differently the feminine penis will behave, compared to the masculine one. Tou may not get random erections so much, if at all. They may not be as firm or last as long. Orgasms change from this narrow one-and-done thing focused on the genitals to a sort of repeatable, full-bodied scalp-to-toes revelation. What I did not fully understand, though, before going into this was the fluid issue. Because, yo, this is no longer a story about semen—that’s not what the body cares about anymore—and that changes things in some curious ways.

Since they’re the same organ with the same basic purpose, the fluid that the prostate produces is basically the same as the fluid from the skene’s gland. Add estrogen, it’s no longer building up pressure to release and it’s not inclined to stir up a batch of semen; all it wants is to lubricate. That’s what girls do, right? Righto! So there’s going to be oozing: slow, fairly constant. the body thinks it’s doing a thing. When we get to orgasm, again we’re probably not doing the spurting here. There’s this sensation radiating from the chest and the brain sort of melts, but not much likely comes out. If anything does, it’s going to be thin and slick and clear—just more of the same lubricant, right.

Granted everyone’s different, and if you prowl you’ll see some trans women who are, like, playing Splatoon somehow, but that’s not the typical programming.

Now, the upshot of all of this is that—let’s be honest, whatever your predilections may be—semen is pretty gross, and fucking impossible to clean up. It stains anything it touches. It quickly becomes cement. It gets everywhere. Don’t let it near hot water or it will clog your drain forevermore. But, this clear fluid, the lubricant? Water-soluble, baby. A little greasy, but it comes right out of fabric; will not ever clog a drain or cake in some weird place; doesn’t carry a strong odor. It’s so easy to deal with! On a 1-10 scale of gross annoyingness, it’s maybe a 2-3, tops.

For all that the literature likes to demonize sexual changes and hold them up as a warning of what could happen, there are so many things that just work better, to my purposes and sensibilities. No randomly getting turned on! It’s possible to enjoy things, rather than just furiously trying to reach a goal! And best of all, no more gross mess!

I almost never feel the need to indulge anymore, which is a relief of sorts, but in the rare event it does makes sense emotionally, psychologically, it is so much less of a hassle. There’s no more of this ugh, what was that even for; now i need to clean up, but i feel like dying instead. Now it’s just about appreciating my body and its functionality, enjoying an occasional intimate moment with myself. Showing myself some care and consideration. No pressure, no fast destination, and no punishment at the end. I no longer feel gross or ashamed or overly embarrassed. I’m in control of myself at every step. And then, it all just washes away: no evidence, no harm, no foul. Ready to move on—energized, enriched, rather than half-dead and ready to cry.

I just like myself so much now. I like the way i’m coming to think, to feel. I’m starting to like the way I look. I like the way my body behaves. Everything makes sense to me in a way it never did. I am so glad to be the person I am continuing to become. I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this.

Again, everyone’s wired a little different, responds to things in their own way. so this story isn’t gonna apply everywhere—and maybe it’s not what everyone will want. That’s cool. People have their priorities. But, whee. this would have been a selling point if I’d known. And I never would have, because of the way it’s always been pitched—with every bit as much judgment as everything else I find important in life.

Rolling Gender

  • Reading time:2 mins read

My identity feels like it’s on a rolling 90-day window. Anything older than three months, I feel increasingly out-of-touch with that person as I continue to develop at this rapid rate—existentially, emotionally, psychologically, physically, physiologically.

I know the six-month mark back in August was the turning point, where everything started to click and I just became a new person and left that old shell behind. That’s when the body changes really started to kick in. That’s when I completed my first round of voice training. That’s when I made the connection that all my natural body language, the way I’m wired to behave, is super feminine—that to be the person I want to be is mostly about letting go, letting the scales fall away. That my existence is proof of itself. That’s around the time that I noticed people had gotten way nicer to me than I’m used to, apparently because they were starting to respond to the real me rather than that awful husk.

But four months on, I look back at that person and I think, gosh, they had no idea. They didn’t have my experiences. They weren’t me yet.

Right now, the edge of the person I currently know as myself, that probably sits around late September. That threshold of current me, I think it’s feeling actual happiness for the first time in my life—and just… all that fallout that’s come from that. All the feelings about myself, all the other new perfectly normal emotions that I’d never known before. (Also, haha, my first bra.)

Really I’ve got this buffer of about a month where I can say, yeah, this is roughly still me; I recognize her. Beyond that, it’s like looking at a childhood photo and thinking, who is that kid? And who on earth dressed them that way?

The Face Underneath

  • Reading time:4 mins read

A thing that always encourages me is to see a familiar cis woman with a clean face and to realize again how androgynous most people look when not performing Gender.

Our notions of femininity and masculinity are cartoons that we lean into, exaggerating the slightest of differences. People, the Big Two sexes, really don’t look that different. Any distinction is subtle and mostly superficial—which requires us to blow what slight nuances there are out of proportion, so as to prevent confusion.

Cis people often are just as scared as trans people of being misgendered. There are consequences—and it’s easy to do! Just fail to perform correctly. Wear your hair the wrong way, demonstrate the wrong body language, and everyone will let you know.

So for me to see the actual face underneath the gender costume, it’s like—oh, right. she and I really don’t look that different at all, huh. Most of this is just about how you declare and assert yourself, more than anything intrinsic. Gender is a verb. And one can always work on that.

Once you realize gender is 90% performance and that sex is only a hair short of arbitrary—there’s no good reason we classify things as we do, our system is broken as hell, and it’s literally all the same hardware, just with some late developmental tweaks—sexuality becomes absurd. Like, it just doesn’t make that much sense to me to prioritize attraction to one person over another except on an individual basis, based on who they are and what it is specifically about them. If you’re gonna be attracted to people, why be an exclusionist dork? What difference does it make. or are you one of those “I like all music except rap and country” people.

I mean, I’m aroace, so I don’t… actually get the two main kinds of attraction that stop people’s brains from working. Maybe if I were more insane I’d get this thinking.

Our whole system of relating to ourselves and each other is based this weird lattice of fiction and generalization and hyper exaggeration that upsets us so deeply when it fails to match the reality. The dismay when we’re faced with the idea that people are just people—I’m sure you’ve seen the cishet bros who express dismay after seeing a girl take off her makeup, like they’ve been lied to. The fact that she just looks like a person; that a moment ago they were attracted to someone who could just as well have been a dude if she’d performed differently, it freaks them out.

It’s all internalized power structures. That’s the script we’re playing out and reinforcing and policing every time we get dressed, every time we interact with another person in this stupid culture we’ve made for ourselves. We’re playing someone else’s game for their benefit. It’s the last thing we’re meant to realize, that behind all this branding and spin we’re all basically the same—because, what then? Why are we doing all this to each other? Why aren’t we all cool and supporting the people we meet like they’re another part of ourselves?

What’s the point of this garbage we’ve been filtering? Well, it’s to keep us busy, lest we address the, like, twelve people in the world who are taking everything from us. All these rules are there so we don’t take apart these fucking systems that do us no good, that drain us of our basic humanity, to elevate the most inhuman of us all. of whom there are scant few.

I’m not saying, don’t do gender, kids. I’m not saying, do away with makeup or gendered dress or behaviors or this that or whatever. I love being feminine. It just makes me so happy with myself. It makes life worth living. I’m just saying, it’s all dress-up. None of it is real beyond the meaning that we individually give it.

And just seeing that baseline of androgyny, seeing just how close the prettiest woman in the world can look to just, I dunno, a soft boy, feels to me like such a weight off. It’s this reminder of commonality—that it’s all cool. Just, be you. Everyone is an individual. Everyone has these choices.

Bounding Box

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Every sexual situation I’ve been in, I’ve been so scared—and the more scared I’ve been, the more angry that’s made the other person. the more they would yell and berate me and threaten, all while I was completely exposed and helpless.

It’s like how people explode at you for daring to have an anxiety attack in public: how dare you embarrass them like that; what’s wrong with you; you need to shape up right now and apologize and stop having emotions of your own, or there will be consequences. Except, worse.

Part of all this is—I’m aroace, right? So any time I’ve wound up in a scenario like that, it’s because I’ve been coerced into the situation. and I’m doing my best to placate them, avoid upsetting them, by trying to give them what they want. And, it just… never goes well.

All of which is to say, I’m—I have a lot of trouble framing, finding the language for the experiences I’ve had. I don’t want to be dramatic, or to claim a kind of victimhood that doesn’t apply. But the experiences I’ve had, they’re not good. I have regular nightmares.

I feel like every relationship in my life, romantic and otherwise, there has always been a huge imbalance. I am used to being at a disadvantage where someone else controls all the money, the mobility, the plans, the terms. I have nominal input if any. I agree, or I am a problem.

Which is not to say that I want to exert power either. That’s gross. It’s that it is always made clear to me that I exist on sufferance, and that this can be remedied at any time. Since I was a child, this has been my baseline understanding of life. And, I don’t want it anymore.

It can be really hard to tell what’s normal when one doesn’t have a reference, right—and boundaries and self-respect are just about impossible to measure out when one comes to understand one will always be wrong about everything.

It’s hard for to process all of this. I am all for sex positivity, for other people. You, do whatever you need to, to live a healthy consensual life. But, it’s so hard for me to wrap my head around what I’ve been through. There’s nothing but negative association here.

I just want to wish it all away.

Having and Giving

  • Reading time:9 mins read

I didn’t have a good childhood, right. I guess some people did? Weirds me out. I can’t wrap my head around that. Up until I managed to leave, I was continually told how much worse everyone else had it, so therefore I had no right to complain. If I failed to be sufficiently grateful that my parents weren’t even worse, I was a horrible child and I deserved whatever was coming.

It’s true that that most of my problems were a matter of neglect, rather than active violence or abuse. So that’s something, I guess. It’s just that it was a matter of record that no one wanted me. No one cared that I existed. They vocally, regularly, in so many words, resented the fact that I was there, and tried their hardest to wish me away.

I was hungry most of the time. I was left mostly on my own, to figure out my meals in a house full of things nobody sane would eat except each of them specifically and independently of each other. There were no meals and there was no compromise, middle ground of communally edible food because everyone hated each other. I’m pretty okay at baking because I learned in grade school if I wanted a birthday cake i had to work it out myself.

I has nothing to wear except old, too-small, torn and thin, usually dirty clothes that I had no say over and that often gave me a rash. I knew better than to ask either of them for help or a favor. If they didn’t turn on me, they’d find a way to fuck it up. I learned never to express emotion or betray a hint of what I wanted or needed or intended, lest someone scream or hit me or lock me in my room for a couple days. Best case, all I’d get is mockery.

They were both horrible, but of the two I think my father sometimes took a kind of pity. Like, he wouldn’t actually address anything or many any steps to make it better but he’d make these gestures toward… not an apology, but filling the void in some small way. That’ll do; assuage his conscience.

One of the reasons I’ve all this background in videogames is that around 1986 he found that if he kept up a slow but steady supply of the things, I would spend all my time with them and not bother anyone. He wouldn’t have to think about me again for days. Weeks. That was his parenting done. I don’t want to knock that entirely because, yo, I got a fair number of videogames to occupy me, and to use to escape from… all of that, everything around me. And I know we didn’t have a lot of money. But this wasn’t really about me, right. It was pure fucking guilt on his part.

Anyway, these gifts really made my mother livid. (Which also may inform part of why he continued to do it.) She got so angry at the idea of my… well, having things. So I never got any clothes that i needed. Nothing would ever get washed. She’d ensure I didn’t get any food that I wanted in the house, and again no one prepared anything. Were I to actually ask for something—some toy or book or whatever—well, who did I think I was? Royalty?

The exception being the odd, rare thing she got it into her head to bestow upon me regardless of whether I wanted it or not. Regardless of anything I said, any boundary I put up. I had no right of refusal. I’d unambiguously tell her straight out no, then she’d pretend it was news.

When she saw me receiving things that she didn’t pick out, that I actually wanted and enjoyed, she went fucking apoplectic. It was like, what the fuck was this; I didn’t deserve anything! If she saw me leaving the house with my father, she would scream at him, “DON’T BUY [them] ANYTHING!!“

So, okay. Let’s take a step back now. At this point there are a few possible ways to read this, right?

I know my mother used to be all hippie-dippy. I’d heard stories of how when my sister was a teen the former would dig through the latter’s drawers for any bras, so she could trash them. The patriarchy and all, you know. So, a lack of barriers, lack of compassion and theory of mind, Just plain fucking crazy, but second-wave feminism forever! There seemed to be some guiding principle here, even if a stupid one, applied maliciously.

All this time, these forty-some years, I figured, okay, what a flaming asshole—but anti-consumerism, anti-materialism? Sure, okay, I get it. Again we didn’t have much money, and I can see how especially in the 1980s, putting all this value on owning stuff would be perceived as, like, not so superb. Even now, I’m not totally ascetic—I have my books and games and movies, my small collections of things I’ve hung onto all my life—and I am so fucking broke that buying things isn’t really an option. But even if I weren’t, I’d think twice before any purchase. Do I really need this, I think. Do I really want it?

Here’s the thing, though. Just now while eating my garlic bread, I remembered a pretty key clarifying detail. My mother, who was so adamant against my having appropriate clothes to wear, food to eat, anything of my own that gave me a little joy in the void of humanity that was my childhood? She has a fucking consumer addiction.

She will never not spend money on any random thing you put in front of her, no matter whether she wants or needs it or likes it or has the money or not. She lives like a fucking trust fund kid. She will sit and watch QVC for 16 hours a day and buy at least two of everything they show. It gets so she’s afraid of the mailman because she doesn’t even know what she’s ordered. After the divorce, she got the house, completely paid off. Within a few years she’d taken out two mortgages, to pay off credit card bills from all the stuff she orders every day.

All this woman does all day is buy things for herself. Non-stop.

So. It’s taken me all these years to connect these dots, right.

She was so against my ever having anything at all. It was obscene for me to ask for so much as a sandwich. But it wasn’t about a lack of money. It wasn’t about anti-capitalism or anti-materialism. That wasn’t a problem at all. All of the neglect, the active denial of care or support, the rage at the idea of my being on the receiving end of anything but the scraps she hand-selected—it was all about me.

All of which to say: holy shit. Fuck her.

Just. Goddamn.

I cannot emphasize this enough: Fuck. Her.

What the absolute shit.

What.

I knew that my parents always hated me, but. Like.

I just.

So.

Yeah.

There we go.

I have no guilt, no qualms whatsoever, about wiping her from my mind. Any lingering crap about cutting her—anyone related to me—out of my life, I just.

No. Fuck her, absolutely and forever. This is not a person worthy of my pity, my guilt, or anything else. She can just fall down a well and die.

I’m not especially angry, even. I just—no.

I mean, I’m a little angry. but it’s not this overwhelming rage. It’s too tired for that. It’s more that I’m done. I solved the puzzle. I don’t have to ever think about this again.

Time to shut down that runtime. Clear that space.

Still at 42 years old, I feel such intense guilt for wanting anything at all for myself. It’s a thing I’ve had to actively work against since coming to grips with who I am, and recognizing my need to recognize and affirm and support this person whom I’ve discovered I like and want to be. And, that’s why all that garbage is there, inside of me. That’s who put it there, and that’s why she did it.

All this shit, it’s from some jerkass who called me an “interloper” for happening to be alive through no action or desire or consent of my own. Who actively wanted to deprive me of any agency, means, joy, or respect even as she ran up the bill on her own interests.

To her i was an “interloper.” To my father I served only as an excuse for her not to get a job. He was open about my older sister being the only good thing that ever came out of the marriage. Nobody wanted me, so for me to assert my existence, to remind them that I was there, was fucking evil to them.

And I just—no.

Despite everything, somehow—despite the pieces that I’m made out of, despite all my experiences and neglect and a fucking lifetime of trauma—I’m actually kind of awesome.

I never deserved to be treated like that, by anyone. Nobody does. Nobody would.

And, I love me. Finally. Despite everyone’s efforts.

I deserve to want things, materially and otherwise, within whatever ethical structure strikes me best. My basic needs deserve to be tended. I deserve joy and reward and support. I deserve to be a fucking human being.

Which is a thing that nobody in my life has ever told me.

Despite everything, here I am: still alive. and everything that I’ve been accused of.

What they did to me was wrong.

What my ex-spouse did to me was wrong.

And the list can keep going on, filling those gaps in between.

And I absolutely cannot carry that around with me any longer.

Never Not Queer

  • Reading time:5 mins read

With the end of my voice lessons, and the sudden nascent social need that followed, I followed my therapist’s advice and did that local trans Zoom meetup thing. It was… weird, and awkward, but I guess it reached a sort of equilibrium by the end. I don’t know if this sort of a thing is for me. I feel so lost in groups like this. Still I tried it anyway. So: bravery points for Azure! Would she have done this six months ago? No way!

I think I feel kind of weird in organized queer spaces, to be honest. I mean, any social situation is going to be odd, but—like. there are elements here, it’s like the Red-Headed League or something, right? Creating a space based on this sort of thing, it’s like, “Hey, you have Gender too? Amazing! Let’s both sit here and wait for one of us to talk!” That baseline of presumed trauma that underlies the queer experience also makes it, like—saying anything is a potential minefield. So that adds this extra layer of awkward. And I am So Very Inelegant in this regard, despite my efforts. So, whee, what do we do here, right? I’ve a notion I might manage better in spaces that are About Something, which also just happen to attract people who are very probably queer. That makes more sense to me.

It may not help that a third of the conversation was devoted to awkwardly sitting in silence while one of the members, logged in from her phone at a laundromat, yelled at someone else in the laundromat without muting the phone. At one point I had to ask, are we all on the same page? When she rejoined the conversation, she’d just start talking about whatever she felt like regardless of what anyone else was saying, and… often one sentence would bear no relation to the previous one, in a way I found very difficult to follow. She eventually left.

Another thing about all this is—I don’t know how to spin this. So let’s just air my internalized garbage, right. I’ve been doing my transition almost entirely in a bubble here. There’s been the COVID, under which I’ve rocked the medical angle. Before that, I was dealing with too much trauma to go outside or look at or talk to people in any form.

I tend to think of myself as, like… moderate, in my transition goals, right. I’m not a binary woman, but I do want to embrace the femme on my own terms. I’m my own kind of a girl. Likewise I’ve only been at this for so long; I’ve got a long way to go. I don’t really know what I’m doing yet, and I’m only ten months into the body stuff. But sitting there in my lace top and skirt, a face full of carefully if ineptly applied makeup, nodding and listening patiently to these other trans women rant and talk over each other about cars, I have never felt so prissy in my life.

Gender is what you make of it. It’s made up social garbage. Nothing matters but figuring out a version of yourself that you can actually like. Hell, I am extremely non-binary by ideology and just my lack of understanding of, feeling grossed-out by, gender extremes and stereotypes. This isn’t about anyone else, really. It’s just about me, and… like. My trouble feeling like I fit in anywhere. No matter how tailored the space might sound.

I’m accustomed to feeling prissy and overly feminine in male spaces. My parents made it clear what a prissy child I was, and punished me for it. My ex-spouse made me feel extraordinarily prissy in the scope of my marriage, and made it a regular point of abuse. Here, though, I went in expecting, okay, there would be some common ground. Maybe a couple of super-girly femmes to make me feel normal, haha. Just left of androgynous.

Well. Guess not as much.

Again, this is just about me. Other people can do whatever, and it’s all valid. I just, it’s so hard to find a space that makes sense to me. I was so clearly the odd girl out here. as is ever the case. It just felt particularly extreme last night. Which is the last thing I expected, the last place I expected to feel that way. I’d mention some of the things I’ve been doing just for my own sake, to support my ideas about myself, and there’d be this collective shrug. “Yeah, I don’t really see the point of that.”

Then back to, like. Sports.

So, oh well. I need to get it in my head, I guess, that nothing is ever going to be set up for me. None of this is my world. Every little thing I do, I need to put it together myself from first principles or it ain’t gonna work at all and I’m going to come away frustrated, lonely, and miserable.

So when we come out of this pandemic… I guess it’s time to get building.

Neutral Femme

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Ten months in, it’s starting to get to the point where the femme is just standard—makeup, wardrobe, or not. Even on a garbage day like today, I can look at myself and see basically the person I know myself to be. We’re already so close to where we wanted, and this becoming is gonna keep happening for another couple years probably. I’m extraordinarily far along for, what, ten months? That’s nothing.

It’s such a shift in reality to walk into the bathroom, and even when I’m not trying to do anything really, there she is. There I am. This is a real thing. I actually exist. I’m bending reality back the way it’s supposed to be, and that old story is becoming just some phantom loose end.

Back before I began this, I had a vague target—an ideal scenario, that I didn’t know if I’d ever hit. It would be nice, I thought, to present more feminine than not even if I were to dress neutrally, do nothing special. Jeans and t-shirt, right. Ten months into, like, a five-year journey probably, and despite all these complicating factors like my height, I think we’re pretty close already.

This whole thing is exploration, right. I’m always gonna be non-binary, but the more I lean in to the girl zone, the more I map out all the territory that was denied me for so long, the more I realize how great it is over here. The more that I enjoy being a girl, that I realize this is just who I am. It’s who I’ve always been. I’ve never been this happy.

Hell, I’ve never been happy at all. This is an emotion that I literally never experienced until like two and a half months ago. and now, I just… love me. Which is so bonkers. I’d never have imagined I could do that.

But then, I’m not the same person I used to be. That person wasn’t made to be loved. They were made to bring me here safely. Well, as safely as they could.

The Purge

  • Reading time:5 mins read

So now New Who has been around for about as long as Doctor Who was when Sue Malden first did an audit and realized that the BBC no longer retained big hunks of the first eleven years of the show (many of which have since been filled in; many famously will likely never be). To get an idea of the insanity here, what would this look like if transposed to the modern era? Well, it wouldn’t be precise because of all the differences in production, episode length, episode count. We’ve got all these gap years as well. But, we can make a stab at it!

“Heaven Sent” (Doctor Who series 9, episode 11; 2015)

On first tally, much of the material from 2005-2016 would just be gone; no copies known to exist. That would be up through Peter Capaldi’s second series as the Doctor. After freaking out a little, we would later be able to fill the gaps from copies sold abroad or misfiled somewhere, albeit often in the wrong aspect, resolution, framerate—and for reasons, lots of episodes from 2011-2016 would now only exist in black-and-white, so we’d have to find a way to deal with that.

After pulling in all the favors and scouring the globe, we’d be able to lock down everything from series 6 (2011) on in some form or other, though much of it would need heavy restoration work. we’d have most of series 1, 2, and 5, but 3 and 4 would basically just be gone, the odd episode or fragment aside, and we’d only have half the 2009 specials. We would, however, have plenty of screenshots—and, curiously, complete audio for every episode, carefully reassembled from fan reaction videos on YouTube.

From series 1 (2005) we’d really only be missing the renowned early Slitheen story which all the kids remember being excited about at the time, and a middle segment of the finale, “Parting of the Ways.” From series 2, just half of “The Satan Pit” two-parter.

“Aliens of London” (Doctor Who series 1, episode 4; 2005)

Series five (2010), we’d have in entirety except for this one dull-sounding story where the doctor shares a room with someone, that based on the synopsis and the available screenshots regularly comes in at the bottom of episode polls.

Perhaps the most frustrating loss is of 2009’s epic “The End of Time,” which fan circles generally recognize as the best Doctor Who serial ever on the basis of the pivotal material it covers and the fact that the description just sounds really cool you know—as well as the classic favorite “Planet of the Dead.”

Anyway, you see how insane it was when Ms. Malden bothered to look and realized, oh. you know. we just… threw all that away, huh. We wiped every copy, because by 21st-century standards we needed the hard drive space for ongoing episodes of Graham Norton.

See, you get all these apologists waxing about, well, they didn’t know any better back then; it was a different time. Yes they did, though! Other shows—look, the producer of Blue Peter put in an order that every single episode of her show be retained, in consideration of its long-term cultural value. We didn’t just invent basic foresight and reasoning capability in 1980. (Though we may yet find it someday!) Like any kind of garbage. in any given time period there are always people who knew better. When they did The Fucking Talons of Weng-Chiang, it was 1977. There were many people in 1977 who would have been capable of seeing the racial depictions in that serial and noticing that they were in fact Not Okay.

It’s complicated, right. as things will be. The purge was just this comedy of miscommunication, with some people assuming that of course someone would hang onto things in some other department, other people assuming of course they wouldn’t; people forgetting to put in orders of retention; other people misfiling, losing stuff. What we’ve managed to get back is this patchwork: some from the BBC Film Library, which asserted it wasn’t their responsibility to hold onto the show and that they very much shouldn’t have any copies at all actually; some from the Engineering Department, which only held onto tapes until they were needed for something else, which could be a matter of weeks after first broadcast (in the case of some late Jon Pertwee serials).

Most of what survives is a film prints made for foreign broadcast. Most of those were retained briefly by BBC Enterprises before getting burned to clear shelf space—since hey, they were just copies, right? Other prints made their way accidentally back to the Film Library or the National Film Archive, neither of which was supposed to hang onto them, but they were so disorganized that they didn’t bother to sort them out for disposal. Other prints were found abroad or in church basements or rummage sales, years later.

So yeah, the assertion that, nobody knew any better, nobody thought like this back then—that’s… not true. In the same way that it never is. Some people didn’t! Some very much did! The problem is that nobody talked to anyone, everyone just assuming their map of the world was the correct one.

And that problem, that’s… not one that’s gonna go away soon, huh.

Making Spaces

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Today was my final voice class of the semester. The two hours went by as usual, with no special event until the very end when the usual compelled gratitude session was swapped for an open-air discussion of what has and has not been constructive over the course, particularly under these conditions. There was a lot of silence, and as I will do I waited until I was sure I wasn’t about to speak over anyone else or eat up other people’s time before chiming in. I wound up getting weird and emotional, and giving a five-minute speech on human contact and safe spaces. With that, the instructor was like, okay, right. guess that’s it, then. Bye, everyone.

I may not be able to continue with the class in the spring, as they are reintroducing a fee. For someone with a steady income I guess it might be nominal. The older lawyer brushed it off as nothing. But if I had that kind of money, I’d be spending it on other necessities way before an online class. Still if that’s it, if we’ve reached the end, I think I got a good pile of basic principles and developed a feel for where I want to go. I can keep working on it from here, in a way I didn’t have the tools to do before.

You can see where I tried to manage the forest green eyeshadow dust that landed on my upper cheeks, as if i meant to do that. Oh, I insist, it’s just part of the style!

I don’t exactly make friends easily, but it was helpful to have a regular group every week—to check in, be myself, be affirmed, be supported the whole time. It i think helped slightly to unpick this basic terror of talking to people or opening up. It only hit me as it was ending, that was my main point of face-to-face connection—and now it’s over.

Between the classes and the HRT, this year has really shifted a lot of things. I never used to want human contact. It was dangerous, and it reflected back to me so much that I hated about myself, I couldn’t deal with it. But since the summer, I’m learning it doesn’t have to be like that. This regular connection will be weird to lose, and it may not fully click for a while. By that point, maybe it will be safe to go outside?

I’ve begun to notice that there are few scenarios in life where there is a right way of doing things. Mostly, there are ways that people have done things, that have worked for them. The way to proceed generally is not to replicate those results absent of their original context, but to study and adapt the things one likes. To play until one has worked out one’s own borders, techniques, ideas, and preferences—then to be curious and incorporate anything one comes across that feels like it fits. In most matters, that’s all you can do: be interested, have your own ideas, and be open to others’. That’s life.

There’s a confidence here that is new to me. I didn’t even see its growth until the training wheels came off. Now I’m not quite sure where to go. But, I do have options.

Understand the Concept of Love

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Narcissistic abuse is recorded as a specifically cruel, emotionally devastating and terrifying phenomenon that millions of children experience and live with; these wounds do not heal without ever being addressed, and for all of the victims currently experiencing it or trying to recover, it’s vital to create and share resources. It’s also vital to provide a space where all of us feel safe to discuss it and out all our abuser’s crimes. To say to these survivors and victims that narcissistic abuse isn’t real, or to not talk about it, is not only gaslighting but implying their entire lives didn’t happen, they imagined their own torture, and to take away the option of recognizing and fighting this type of abuse.

[…]

This is where we come to the goal of these specific attacks on survivors; the point is to stop us from creating and sharing resources because their pool of victims of abuse shrinks once all the signs of abuse are easily recognized and shared. Narcissists don’t like victims realizing they’re being abused, and leaving. They don’t like not having a lot of possible new victims who wont be able to tell they’re predators. They especially don’t like being held accountable for their actions or experiencing any consequences for it. This is why they find it perfectly acceptable for them to attack and threaten into silence survivors of abuse, in my case to the point of violent threats, rape threats, suicide baits and smear campaigns.

Furious Goldfish, Tumblr post, November 26, 2020

This quote from Tumblr is specifically about parental abuse, but it gets at the only real conclusion I can come to for why my last abuser would (dark-hilariously) threaten to sue me in the event I ever spoke about my mental health problems in public. The big problem for them seems to be, if they fail to control the story and exchange of information, it all starts to fall apart.

I don’t know where I would be now, if indeed I would be anywhere, without help from a few of my friends—some of whom kind of tried to warn me for a long time before those final events. but, I was just so used to being wrong about everything. I was so used to giving people the benefit, I couldn’t see it. My imagination wouldn’t stretch that far.

Lately I’ve really begun to understand that one of my key problems is less innately to do with me than it is that for my entire life, starting in my formative years, I’ve been victimized by people who don’t understand the concept of love. People with complete control over me, whom I’ve just accepted for who they are, because why would you not—while they do anything to me. Take out all their insecurities and grievances, project all their problems on the person least able or likely to object—until such a point as it reaches a threshold, something happens, and something snaps. And I’m forced to wall them away for my own protection, all the while still blaming myself for failing to tough it out. If only I could have, if only they would have—

But, you know, not everyone is a monster. Most people aren’t. What I faced, what I learned to expect from others, that’s not healthy. It’s not sane. Nobody should have to live with that. Nobody should accept being treated the way I was treated.

I’ve been set up for so much failure in life, for so much fear, needlessly. I’ve been lied to for decades about what people are like, about what’s normal. And it’s all kind of profane.

And unlike my abusers, I think I do understand love. basically. I know it better than most people, in some ways. From what I see of people, Love is much more of a constant than I had been led to understand. People are kind. People are helpful, affectionate, accepting, concerned. Not everyone, but in general. And—I’m still learning, right, but i think i’m getting better at seeing through all of this. At seeing the world for how it really is.

Bit by bit. all this training that I never received. it’s kind of… i’m sorting it out. slowly.

The Long Game

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Lady Cassandra O’Brien feels like she should bother me more than she does. On principle she’s… not great, right, but in practice it’s hard to even frown that hard. The trans element is misjudged, probably. but I don’t see it as malicious. I know Davies has readily evolved as he’s learned, and admitted his past limitations.

There’s also this thing with progressive transgressive humor, right. You start by making a joke about something, someone unmentionable. The transgression isn’t in demeaning the unmentionable; it’s for acknowledging it. admitting to an uncomfortable world that it exists. Making it a joke gets it in the door at all. When later that existence is normalized such that we’re not discussing validity and rights and compassion, the initial jokes can come off as cruel and insensitive—the sort of thing the regressive sort will latch onto, to try tear down what legitimacy has been built.

If you keep moving long enough, any landmark that once was a step forward becomes a step back. But that marker, its inherent value isn’t gonna always sit in relation to where things are now.

Doctor Who came back 15 years ago. Davies is an angry, militant anarcho-humanist. The offhanded trans joke with Cassandra was probably tasteless then as it would be now, but all things considered to me it doesn’t read as mean-spirited. Kind of the opposite, weirdly; it’s in the spirit of, can we get away with pushing the window here? If we make it a dumb joke, just maybe! This is in contrast to some other things one could cite, like the dialogue in any given Toby Whithouse episode—or, you know, Gareth Roberts. As a person. I know how Davies’ mind works, at least in creative terms, and so try as I might to disassemble this, it’s… fine?

That angry queerness is what connects 2005 Doctor Who to the last time the show was regularly broadcast, and in some ways back to its anarchist, marginalized roots. If we’re gonna get prescriptive, this is to my mind the mode that the show should be working in.

With the Cartmel era, Ace of course is meant to be… bi at least, if not finding her feet as a lesbian. And then serials like The Happiness Patrol, well. For those outside UK queer circles, section 28 may possibly not mean much in 2020, but it’s no accident that this tale of the state suppression of public displays of melancholy—everyone is compelled to be happy all the time, right—hits at the exact moment as legislation banning public displays of, depiction of, discussion of, homosexuality. Under the terms of that very law we can’t talk about how it’s illegal to be gay—but illegal to be sad? Just reverse the polarity and the censors will never notice. Then we can paint the TARDIS pink, and fill the story with glitter and candy—

Or… by 2018 standards, I guess we can rescue Amazon from the evil labor organizers so that society doesn’t collapse without its cheap merchandise.

The McCoy era of course deeply informed Davies. The 2005 episode, “The Long Game,” is based on an old spec script he wrote at the time for the Seventh Doctor and Ace. If you reach back, there is sort of a long predecessor to The Happiness Patrol in The Macra Terror—my sometimes-vote for maybe the best story of the Troughton era—which itself is a story Davies referenced at his best and most bonkers, in “Gridlock.”

Which, speaking of trans jokes, is a word that… I just… misread as another word entirely.

Basically, Doctor Who should be batshit and earnest, and it needs to have something to say. My mind so often reels when people assert the opposite, as with the popular fan response to Ghost Light, In that story, Ace gives a haunted monologue about a formative memory of a hate crime she witnessed against her friend. Apparently that whole scene, and by extension the serial and the era in general, is prime cringe because Ace references “the white kids” when she herself is white. “The white kids firebombed it!” the fans will chuckle at each other.

The same fans who think the one flaw in Talons is a shitty giant rat puppet.

(Which is, incidentally, the very best part of the serial. It’s so charming!)

It was such a good thing for this fandom when all the teenage girls began to rush in about 15 years ago, terrifying the aging-out middle-class white cis dudes. And that’s who Davies brought to the game. That’s who he wanted. That’s who he knew would make a difference.

Davies was right. For its own health, the fandom needed a massive change in its gender makeup. It was a Big Trans plot the whole time. His long game, if you will.

Upward Maintenance

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Considering how old this body is and what a young trans I am, I think I look pretty good mostly. Some things will never be perfect. Other things are a work in progress. Generally, though, i am in good spirits about this. (Which again is so novel to me.)

I say this, as I am not having a particularly pretty day, and it has been frustrating me. But you know. not every day is gonna be a winner. It’s up and down, and today isn’t the end of everything; it’s the beginning of everything else. We’re done with the doom. Azure doesn’t need it.

For decades I’m used to every day being the start of the end. But it’s really not. It never has been. It’s just the start. On prior record, I’ve still got plenty of good days ahead of me. Probably my best is far ahead—way over the horizon available to me today. Yesterday was fine. Nothing is consistent, but there are patterns. and I’ve finally caught mine. not ever gonna let it go.

Being this new in a body this old, it’s kinda like getting a used car or a fixer-upper of an old house. you got a project ahead of you, fixing the damage and maintaining the bones of the thing, but you can make anything your own. Play up the strengths. It’s all in how you wear it.

The Gully

  • Reading time:3 mins read

The what-seem-to-be period symptoms were ebbing today, so I figured, fine; might as well get some more groceries before the plague gets groovy and it will be unsafe to go out at all again. Took a larger than usual tote bag with me; one I hadn’t employed before. As usual there were no fucking baskets, so I threw the food directly in my bag, to procedurally unload at the scanner and more sensibly repack.

As it happens, about ten feet from the self-checkout, the bag exploded. Handle came right off, pulled the stitching right off like a zip cord I had to ask the lady there (luckily not the one who has acted… oddly to me) for a couple paper bags. Problem was, the bags here are really thin—and they have no handles. They’re not made for actually carrying. Still, I scooped them up and did my best.

It was a mile’s walk, with two heavy bags—lots of jars and fluid cartons, right, and no reasonable way to carry them beyond cradling them in the crooks of my arms, adjusting every few seconds as they continually slipped from my grasp. Hips were of little use; I was busy walking, and the bags were thin and irregular. I was terrified of tearing.

I got maybe a third of the way, and had to take a breather. Luckily my neighborhood is well-stooped, so from there I could rest every block or so, wipe away the sweat, try to get some feeling back into my deadened arms. No schedule; as long as I made it back, I was fine.

Way up often here on my street, I happen by this lady, out to garden at concrete or lug about great sacks with her gray hair and her elbows. Today she was down sweeping a concrete gully against the apartments—off and below the front steps where I panted and groaned. She tried gently to shoo me, till she learned I was resting. From there we moved to light patter—she aiming to keep her distance and most of her business, but with a certain ease.

It was nothing much, really; just me and this old lady, in social-distance nicety while she cleaned up a planter disaster. I couldn’t have been more than three, four minutes to gather myself. but it was nice. She was sweet. Distant, busy, yet compassionate. Just a little moment of human connection, you know, in all of this. I don’t get that often.

With my front door at my back, I just fucking crashed. I barely had it in me to put away the freezer and fridge things. Even now after a short nap I can barely lift my arms; it’s awful. I keep feeling tears streaming down my cheeks, from the sheer effort of moving—but that journey, and that respite, sort of confirmed my resolve to do something once we’re out of this whole nightmare. I want to make more contact. There are a lot of kind, sincere people out there, if you wait and listen for them and allow yourself to be a little vulnerable.

Sometimes all you need to do is share a stoop.

We’re In This Together Now

  • Reading time:5 mins read

When Trent Reznor sings “you,” in most cases he’s talking to the other part of himself—call him, Mr. Self Destruct. After Reznor’s own downward spiral that bottomed with a near-death experience on his Fragile tour, his 2005 album With Teeth is largely about recovery. 2013’s Hesitation Marks is about that battle’s return after an age, his musical avatar’s id reasserting itself and the struggle for control resuming with a little more self-awareness this time around.

With Teeth in particular is to me one of Reznor’s most fascinating albums. The whole thing exists in this dazed, sober limbo where Reznor seems to gaze around him, notice how much time has passed, and wonder exactly how he might function as a real person after he’s missed so much along the way.

“Only” (2005, With Teeth)

As fatuous as “Only” may be—the subsumed comedy to so many NIN songs a right up front this time—it’s also weirdly affirming as a recovery anthem. The music holds this uneven smirk while Reznor asserts that, no, that person doesn’t exist; it’s only him now. It almost needs to be as silly as it is, to undercut the drama of the old persona that he means to peel away. “No,” the song says. “You don’t get control here. I’m allowed to mock you.”

The chunky 2/4 backing serves as a loopy funhouse mirror of “Closer.” The lyrics quote “Down In It,” then twist the lyric into a reflection on his behaviors that led him to this point. Musically, Reznor seems to be taking a step back and going, “Yeah, that… that whole era of my life was pretty absurd, huh. Christ, that wasn’t me; that was never even a real person. I can’t let that affect me anymore. Well, I’m here now. It’s okay. I’m fine. I guess.”

You take Reznor’s (character’s) sort of ongoing dialogue with the other unwanted aspect of himself, and pair it with his curiously persistent themes of transformation or becoming—when I say that NIN often feels really super transy to me, this is what I mean. It’s a starting point, anyway.

“Everything” (2013, Hesitation Marks)

That concept to “Only” sort of comes back eight years later in “Everything.” This time, though, there’s a dark undertone. The assertion here—I survived everything—it’s less triumphant than it sounds. There’s a shade of denial; of pushing down that unwanted persona away as it threatens to bubble back to control—pretending it’s gone while it sits, waits.

You never really recover from mental illness or addiction, right. That’s not how it works. You just learn how to cope and manage better. The scars will always be a part of you, lurking as part of your base code. Being so incautious as to say, ha ha, I’m better now; it’s fine—you’re setting yourself up for problems.

There’s this interesting sequence to Reznor’s albums. His big opus that he’ll never live down is of course 1994’s The Downward Spiral. And that’s both the anchor and the weight that affects everything in its wake. That album has at least three direct sequels: first comes 1990’s The Fragile, then With Teeth and Hesitation Marks—each replacing the previous one and telling a slightly different story. The “Downward Spiral” theme from throughout that album keeps reemerging in odd, distorted forms as Reznor tries to escape its shadow—the seeming implication in Hesitation Marks being, for all his growth and change, he will never escape either that legacy or the damage that its story represents. There’s a part of him that will always be Mr. Self Destruct.

That push for recovery, it starts as early as “The Fragile”—weakly, helplessly, almost as a plea, as the album traces its own roller coaster of emotion. “We’re In This Together” strikes me as a particularly curious read, when you take what I say about Reznor and “you.”

“We’re In This Together” (1999, The Fragile)

Once you accept that most of Reznor’s music is about his own mental health struggles, in particular his relationship with his self—and then once you notice how very transy how much of his music feels, one gets some kind of a vibe from lyrics like “You’re the queen and i’m the king/Nothing else means anything.”

None of this of course is to impose any particular reading on Reznor himself as a person. Whatever his deal is, it’s his own deal. I’m not his therapist; I’m not in his head (thank God). I have no interest in projecting anything on a real person. I’m just noticing the way that his art hangs together, and how well it lends itself to reflect a certain set of ideas that… I guess always made an unspoken sense to me.