Yearly Archives: 2020

The Norm, and Conquest

  • Reading time:3 mins read

It bothers me when pundits talk about “destroying norms” like it’s a bad thing. We should constantly be examining and dismantling norms as a matter of procedure. This is how, e.g., science works. What is a problem is when we replace them with much worse, more damaging norms.

That is what freaks people out about Bernie and causes them to equate him with Trump. They’re both out to destroy our norms! It’s the Norman Conquest!

Our norms fucking suck. This is why Trump got elected. People wanted rid of them so much they didn’t care what came next.

Neoliberalism is a lattice of norms that serve to complicate and hide and rationalize the garbage that people have to go through every day, explaining why they should never hope for anything better. It puts people in categories and places while claiming enlightenment.

Norms suck. They only make sense as temporary placeholders, that you check every fucking time you access them to see if they’re still applicable and relevant. And if not, you replace them with something better. This is how life and knowledge and empathy all work.

As an autistic, this point especially rankles. I get a PTSD trigger out of this sense that we need to adhere to unspoken structures just because they exist, never question them. No, dammit. Always ask, why are we doing this? What does it assume? Who does it serve?

Can we be doing this better? Or is this just to protect the power structure?

Because that’s always what it is, right.

Norms are politesse. Politesse is power gaming.

This is what allows the powerful to set people against each other, by saying, “Hey, that vulnerable group is saying it’s impolite for you to behave like this! The snobs! Are you gonna just take that from them?!”

When you’re all wound up, just being asked to be kind to another person can be confused for more bureaucracy meant to put you in your place. Neoliberalism and fascism both depend on this bafflement, which is what makes them such close allies.

Fascism is all about smashing norms as a gesture of progress, only to replace them with even more restrictive norms, over and over, putting people in even smaller boxes. So it’s exasperating, but for the neoliberal, HEY AT LEAST THEY ARE BUILDING NEW NORMS. AND WE’RE STILL SAFE.

“We” of course meaning the business and pundit class. Not the people who need to live (or not) in this society.

Socialism threatens to take away that whole power infrastructure and give nothing in return, because that structure that demands never to be questioned is itself the problem.

Like, new structures will appear! But they will be built to purpose, and reexamined as that purpose shifts.

I can’t deal with invisible power structures. Which is a big reason I am such a mess. Why I have historically gotten in so much trouble. Sometimes for, like, having the wrong expression on my face. Nobody likes them except those they serve. But I in particular cannot manage.

I have zero sympathy for rounding the wagons and protecting the precious norms. The white settlers. Clutching their pearls.

Dismantle it all. Carefully. Like an archeologist, removing a relic from its crust. Pack it away to a museum somewhere appropriate to show how things were.

Life goes on. Work with those who exist here and now, and those we can reasonably expect to come. Meet the needs that exist in the world.

For the norms that are really trenched in good, well.

Lizard Toes

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Though I have no expectations for HRT, and am already getting some of what I hoped in terms of mood stability and energy, I’ve a sense my body as it has developed will put up very little resistance. While I’m starving for estrogen, there is trace evidence of testosterone either.

  • My growth spurt, and voice change, didn’t hit until my late teens.
  • I barely had facial hair until my mid-30s, and it was still patchy until recently.
  • The only body hair I have is on my limbs, and even that’s mostly thin and vellus.
  • I’ve got no upper-body muscle mass at all.
  • My scalp hair has only in the last couple years begun to recede a little above the temples, into that M shape.
  • I’ve never had anything like a libido.

It’s just super clear that any masculine influence in my system has been weak, and slow, and unassertive. It arrives with a shrug. It is clear, based on a laundry list of factors I both have and haven’t mentioned, my biology is not… entirely standard-issue. I’m wondering just how hard it will hit me when my body realizes I finally do have some working hormones to work with.

What i can say is—I have notoriously poor circulation, which makes sense with my historically low heart rate and weak pulse. I’m like a lizard. And my feet are so very far away from my heart, they’re always frozen. I have long found that wearing thick socks can warm my entire body. Now, moments after taking my pill, I start to glow. I can feel my blood. My feet raise to a normal body temperature.

This is one of a million little examples of how I suddenly feel normal and complete and human and confusingly not-like-shit. I have never felt so consistently not-awful as I have since last Tuesday. For maybe an hour after every dose I just feel warm and fuzzy and high, then proceed to feel high-functioning (to my standard) awake for the next eight hours.

I have things to do in the morning, and I feel like at this rate I may just have it in me to keep it together.

Gender Power

  • Reading time:2 mins read

So everything works differently for everyone and placebo sure is a thing, but two pills into this regime I can definitely say they have an immediate mood effect. What I get from estrogen is what it seems like caffeine does to other people. I’m instantly more alert, able to cope. Due presumably to my neurology, caffeine helps me to focus and calms me down. It actually makes me a little tired. It’s like a warn brain shower.

But, I’m… one of my basic daily troubles is feeling capable of… like, anything. It takes me hours to get out of bed, even awake. Doing anything at all, having the energy to get started, feeling like it’s possible for me to engage, is such a struggle. I’m always so drained and discouraged. Halfway through walking home from the supermarket I’ll think, I could just sit down and die here.

And, like. The sudden energy and meed stability I’m getting now with the proper hormones in my system, I don’t have it within me to make this up. I don’t think this is placebo. I think this is correcting a real imbalance. And… I must wonder, do other people feel like this always?

And the effect, it hits so fast. Like my system was starving. I am no longer on my last thread, weak and tired and helpless, where it all could end at any moment.

I could have been doing this the last 25 years, and not been suffering.

Now if I can just medicate this ADHD, we’ll be onto something.

As it is, I’ve had my morning coffee and I am yawning. I was alert until then. But better than going uncaffeinated.

A curious thing is, everyone I interacted with the other day about my medication, from the nurse to the pharmacist, they asked if I had taken it before—and when I said no, they perked up. “Really?! Congratulations!” Like, they genuinely seemed to think it was the coolest thing ever.

One curious effect: blushing. I have not tended to blush, much at all. It’s not a thing that happens to happen. Until now. Every little thing, the last couple days seems to elicit this heat from my cheeks, my temples. It feels pretty weird, let me tell you.

Righting the Balance

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I rarely to never judge others to the extent I judge myself. Things that are completely unacceptable about me, I wouldn’t think of criticizing in another. This is a hard thing for me to get past; just being kind and treating myself with the same compassion as any other person.

With that in mind, getting on HRT has really clicked my transness into reality. It’s obviously not a precondition, but, my head; my own issues, right. All this self-doubt. But this isn’t a phase; I’m not confused or playing around. It’s who I am, and I’m finally acting on it. It’s—I feel this sense of gratitude toward myself, and of relief. Like, finally I’m actually listening. And so much of this reticence, it’s just melted away. I’m not pretending; I’m doing, I’m being. Like, there’s this missing part of me I’m just now finding and unwrapping.

In my case also the HRT was actually a necessary intervention. Beyond any other effects, it’s clear I’ve been working under a chemical imbalance for most of my life that’s been playing havoc with my mood, energy, and cognition. It’s hard to express how fundamentally awful I have always felt. Like, what the baseline normal has been. I’d like to just… hand that to someone chipper for a day, and see how they function.

But, you know. Everyone has different needs. I’m just talking me.

I’ve still got my litany of problems, but. I feel like there’s a major existential issue resolved, pretty much. Fuck doubt! I’m so pleased with myself it’s hard to know what to say. When have I ever taken real care of me? Now I need to just keep listening. But the door is open.

Obedientia Fortuna

  • Reading time:3 mins read

There’s this sense among the privileged that those who do not share their privilege are just going out of their way to get attention. As if the fuss they cause about accommodations or safety is all in fun. Any experience other than their own is some kind of Hollywood myth. If somehow the disadvantaged are not faking it for the lulz, then the Lutheran devil kicks in and, clearly they’re just not trying hard enough or otherwise are of poor moral character, because why else would they be in such an absurd condition?

“Well,” grunts Joe America, “obviously you brought it on yourself, or else the universe in its wisdom has judged against you, so why should I respond with anything other than contempt? (But clearly you must be pretending. For reasons that I can’t articulate at the moment. It’s got to be a scheme. And I’ll show you.)”

I feel like “I Won’t Let You Win” should be the national motto.

This mentality also more or less defines hard Internet culture. The worst thing a person can do, by Internet Law, is suggest they have something different or remarkable to contribute.

We could double up by printing “You Think You’re Better Than Me?!” on back of the dollar bill.

And that’s the thing. A disability, or a marginalized identity, sets people apart, therefore drawing attention, therefore making the less privileged seem in some small way remarkable, which draws suspicion and anger from those who feel a regular need to demonstrate a worth that they’re paranoid they can’t perform.

We’ve got these strong markers as to what makes a person a success. What makes a real man, a proper woman. A true adult. You gotta win, gotta earn more, do better. Gotta collect all the pieces on the board and earn the praise. Maybe get famous? A winner deserves fame, after all.

Our whole culture is competition—and a competition has standard rules. So what are these people doing on the margins, if not cheating by setting themselves apart? That’s not even a real lane! How does this fit into the game I’ve been taught? Well, got to police that. Just because I don’t understand the grift doesn’t mean I can’t see when someone is playing by different rules. And in the unlikely event they’re not faking it… well. They lost. That’s how a game works. Why are we wasting time here?

In sum, ha, ha, the driving myth of our society is garbage.

Horatio Alger can go hang himself with his bootlaces.