i want to try to describe how i relate to my own identity. i don’t know how other people feel about their identities. it’s not a feeling you can transmit. you can’t put your hand on someone else’s and understand how they perceive it. i have no idea if this experiment is even vaguely feasible, but i want to try.

when i turn my attention inward and look for it, there’s nothing. what i grasp for first is a label, something with a shape which it might fit into. there’s a couple of these that come to mind almost immediately: programmer, trans girl, anarchist … but well, that’s the thing. i’ve been all of these and none of these at the same time. some days i don’t “feel” a label but the criteria fit anyway, because of how labels and identity work — by social construction. you can only be a programmer in a world that knows what programming is, that distinguishes it from something else, and that distinguishing defines its criteria. other days i feel it but the criteria don’t exactly fit. being a trans girl is one of those thing. the problem with these criteria is that they are indeed socially constructed, meaning they’re malleable. and as a member of society, it’s not like the construction has nothing to do with me.

i guess the thing is that, maybe more than most, my identity is slippery. some parts remain fixed for longer periods of time than others, but as far as i can tell there’s nothing that remains indefinitely. this seems to set me apart from other people. or at least, people without bpd.

one of the worst parts of a slippery identity is that it’s also difficult for me to grasp much of the time. even i won’t know where part of me has gone, where part of me came from, when to expect that something might appear or disappear. sometimes i wake up and there’s something that was core to me that’s just … vanished. i can’t explain it any better than that. maybe it’ll be back. maybe it won’t. maybe something similar will take its place.

in times like these, consistent action arises out of consistent values. i don’t see values as a part of identity. i think people sometimes choose to make their values their identity, but i don’t believe identifying a certain way is a requirement for holding a certain value. i’ll never believe less in universal human rights, queer rights, the fundamental unjustness of capital, etc. but some days i might think the term “activist” fits more than others. indeed, some days i will highly associate with it, and others not at all.

so when i cast my vision inward.. i see no identity at all, until i pause and let my eyes adjust, and then i see a million. i don’t know how to convey this. how much it feels like i’m at odds with a world that expects me to remain static, to possess a single identity and not a dynamic process of identity. how much that can make me feel bad for not conforming with their expectations; how that can manifest as disappointment and disgust and self-hate, none of which helps, but instead pushes me toward repression.

i find it hard to say i’m one person. it’s hard to say i possess “an identity”, to relate to “my identity” when the singular is utterly dissonant here.

it’s hard to say i relate to identity.

The previous post is a message to myself, so I don’t need to justify it. But I’ll justify it here for anyone else:

These are the experiences of my gender I always wanted but never had. Like anything you identify with, there are these moments where you realise that you’re experiencing some fundamental part of that identity which makes you feel like you’re really a part of it. And for me, this is part of it.

.. best kept to oneself until after achieved. amirite?

I spent most of today reading 75 pages of the muse’s¹ tumble log², and it left me with a variety of feelings.

Anything consciousness-raising is good, and that it certainly did. As with any reading of large quantities of “good stuff”, I have the distinct feeling that I wasn’t being vigilant enough; surely reading so much of this type of material should have a transformational effect on a person, leaving me pumped and ready to fight injustice, love myself and be who I want to be. Yada yada.

Alternatively, perhaps not! What it did leave with me was a renewed sense of wanting to improve³, and a vague feeling that the way there is not only knowable, but more and more in the direction I’m headed, so long as I apply myself, bare myself, defend myself …

The steps I’ve taken towards being right with myself over gender have been rewarding so far; I’m “out” as makes sense at work, and while I don’t think I’ve heard anyone call me by (new) name yet⁴, that will be pretty special.

In the grand scheme of things a name (I suppose) doesn’t seem too special—you’d think with all my complaining about my own use of labels that I wouldn’t accord names so much. But while a label is something one uses to reduce the effort that needs to be expended in working out how to pigeon-hole me⁵, a name is the identifier that wrests control away from the labeller; it embodies ultimate identity, personality, agency, responsibility.

Whereas any label one can apply to someone is necessarily partial, often or eventually wrong, and usually poorly defined anyway⁶, a name embodies your imperfections, your divergences from the pigeon-holes: label-centric identification renders them as annoying impurities (“Ashley is a Buddhist, though not one who meditates.”); names just concentrate on the person (“Ashley.”), and let real communication, real learning, real experience take on the rest of the relationship. You can’t have a relationship with someone who’s defined purely in terms of the adjectives you can apply to them.

Being Anneli is empowering. I think partly I exhausted my (birth) name. Arlen is this. Arlen was this. Now Arlen is that. Uh-oh, Arlen was that. Now Arlen is something else. Et cetera. I’m trying to move on from that, though that is in no way necessary or sufficient to decide that I no longer feel the name represents me. There’s a deeper question in there.

My only explanation is that there’s some fighting somewhere inside me⁷ that rails against the notion of me being “male.” Part of the in-fighting I have (with myself) is that this seems to play into heteronormativity; after all, how can I say “I don’t feel so male, I feel female lots too!” without acknowledging what defines those terms? And frankly that hurts me a bit too; almost like I should be “better than that”⁸. There’s an alot⁹ wound up, just in that. Harbinger of heteronormativity’s end by day; reluctant customer by night. Or something.

So dressing ambiguously, wearing hair ambiguously, being named ambiguously¹⁰, acting ambiguously; they give me some life. Trans has never been a label¹¹ I’ve been fully comfortable applying to myself for some reason, though I feel more and more that it’s appropriate (… even if I don’t plan on transitioning¹²). I hate the hair all over my body, and only the futility of fighting it lets me leave it grow out. And when it does, people¹³ comment on how masculine I look. That kinda kills me.

It’s those kind of experiences that lead me to think that I need to do more in order to broadcast that it’s actually not nice for me to hear things like that; that is, the more work I put into appearing effeminate, the more obvious it will be that I don’t want those comments.

At times like these, I tend to think back to how this plays into heteronormativity¹⁴. I’m a bit lost. But I’m finding my way.

1. Sorry if calling you that makes you feel uncomfortable (should you be reading this)! It’s more a reflection on that you exemplify ideals I strive towards but still fail at practising now much more than I succeed at them. ↩

2. Does anyone call them that? Just like you’re reading my web log now. Hah. ↩

3. I nearly used the word “inadequacy” here, but I’ll step out and say: I don’t have any such sense. I don’t feel inadequate in the role I play in anyone’s lives, and where it is close to that line, it’s in my own. ↩

4. This could have something to do with me being too embarrassed (or something?) to speak louder than a whisper when someone requests clarification on how to pronounce it. ↩

5. This applies equally whether it is someone else or myself applying the label. ↩

6. Tell me “what it means to be male” in 20 words or less. ↩

7. Fighting that, frankly, I’m lucky to be able to give a voice to; I’m sometimes painfully aware (probably not often enough) that the concerns of others are so much bigger than mine that it seems petty in ways to complain about them—but what, does that mean that no one with “bigger” concerns can experience gender dysphoria? No, of course they can; it just gets added onto everything else, too. ↩

8. (!) ↩

9. I love you, alot! ↩

10. Or unambiguously, and as some would say (and I would tell them to go stick their head in a pig), wrongly. ↩

11. ohnonothoseagain. ↩

12. Which seems to some people to be as much a part of identifying as trans as actually feeling you’re in the wrong sexed body, as evinced by a friend’s “you’re not actually going to go trans, are you?” when I told them that I was Anneli. ↩

13. Like my mother. ↩

14. Why is being effeminate a goal or desire for me? Because it is! ↩

tea clouds, er lang (stupid boy), re re re. RE. Religious education (Regular expression). Religion is a regular expression? /religion/g. Religion as a global religious expression. /religion/i; case-insensitive religion. Insensitive expression. Stunning prophecy on p.LXXI.

Don’t get started on labels again. I love jumping to labels. They drive me along on my little way, helping me avoid all actual inclination to do things, but just to say “oh yes I’m X and therefore I can have the opinion Y.”

I have applied the following terms to myself in the past:

girl. felon. agnostic. Australian. wife. solipsist. son. alone. pilot. husband. monk. nihilist. daughter. friendly. Christian. enemy. vegan. Buddhist. assured. right. Estonian. parent. vague. transwoman. lover. man. gay. heterosexual. polyamorist. boyfriend. queer. genderqueer. boy. atheist. girlfriend. unfriendly. wrong. transgender. father. Zen practiser. Sikh. antipatriot. vegetarian. feminist. universalist. woman. omnivore. friend. humanist. relativist. theist. programmer. homosexual. interpreter. Muslim. Mahayana practiser. mother. monogamist. Theravadin.

myself?

That’s one label I should keep.