snowy Sunday

[kindkit]

I'm at home, in domestic mode (have made dashi, will be putting a loaf of bread in the oven soonish, also Cleaning The Bathroom OMG), and a little bit bored.

So: ask me anything! Fannish, personal (including any questions about my trans-ness), philosophical, political, my favorite color, whatever. Nothing is automatically off-limits, and I promise not to be offended by any well-meant question. I may choose not to answer or not to answer in much detail if I find it's a tricky subject for me, however.

Anonymous questions are okay if you feel the need. (Well, they're okay on DW. On LJ I've disabled anonymous comments due to spam, so come to DW if you want to ask something anonymously. This is assuming I can even post to LJ, of course.)

Comments

It's cool if I'm actually too late to this party.

[lemposoi]

Fannish:
- Have you noticed any patterns in what kind of fandom you're likely to get into?

Personal:
- What things do you iron and what not? (Underwear, sheets, shirts, anything at all?)

Trans*ness:
- How many people call you by which name/pronouns and how okay are you with that?

Philosophical:
- Are all moral philosophies baseless invention, or useful tools for navigating a social world, or both?

Political:
- What do you think about libertarianism?

Re: It's cool if I'm actually too late to this party.

[kindkit]

Fannish: Certain kinds of things will definitely draw me in (for example, fraught love-hate relationships between men) but for every pattern there seems to be an exception. Some kind of m/m slash subtext is almost a necessity (but then there's Colditz, which I love and slash despite little subtext); I tend to go for big universes and ensemble sources (but then there's Tintin, which really only has two full-fledged characters). I do very much prefer "genre" texts over "realistic" domestic-drama type things, and generally the source needs to have fairly strong writing and/or acting to sustain my interest.

Personal: I iron as little as possible. Shirts if absolutely necessary. I'd never iron anything other people wouldn't see.

Trans-ness: (Incidentally, I don't use the asterisk when talking about myself. Although I haven't started to transition yet, I consider myself transsexual; it's very much a bodily thing for me, and I want surgeries if I can ever afford them.) I'm not out in meatspace, so people at work etc. call me "she." This is uncomfortable. Online, I'm out and I want to be called "he"; people so far have been great about this. I've been misgendered a few times by people who don't know me (since the default assumption is female on LJ and DW), and a couple of times accidentally by people who knew me when I was still being called "she," but no one's ever done it on purpose or maliciously.

I do have a male meatspace name picked out, but I haven't had occasion to use it.

Philosophical: Moral philosophy is an area in which I am shamefully ignorant.

Political: I disagree with libertarianism. While I guardedly admire libertarians' tendency to support LGBT rights, the decriminalization of drug use, and so on, I think libertarian economic philosophy is innately cruel (since it takes away any social safety net and would literally allow the poor to starve) and would be disastrous in practical terms by deregulating and allowing corporate interests to do whatever the hell they wanted (sell unsafe food, dump untreated wastewater into rivers, pay starvation wages and deny workers safe conditions, etc.)

Also, most libertarians I have known have been abrasive, entitled male jerks who think they're a lot smarter than they actually are. I think libertarianism envisions a world in which those guys are the top of the heap, and that frankly scares me.

Re: It's cool if I'm actually too late to this party.

[lemposoi]

Fannish: Sounds familiar.

Personal: I don't iron shit. Now I do own an ironing board and an iron, but for a long while there I didn't.

Transness: Thanks for the heads-up about the asterisk. Now I know! Trans can be short for so many things, but I also kind of get why one wouldn't want to use "transsexual" in everyday speech even when it's the most appropriate term: length, and also people tend to have negative associations with anything "sexual" (see: gay rights people call gay people gay, anti-gay people call gay people homosexual).

Philosophical: I loved the first course I ever had on philosophy, and absolutely loathed the second, because the second was ethics, and most ethical systems don't even attempt to be objective. Happily, that stopped me thinking that my own ideas about morality were somehow flawed, and also disillusioned me about philosophy: it's useful to think about thinking, and fun, but a lot of it is just people justifying irrational belief systems and thus to be taken with a grain of salt.

Political: *nod*nod*nod*

Re: It's cool if I'm actually too late to this party.

[kindkit]

I also kind of get why one wouldn't want to use "transsexual" in everyday speech even when it's the most appropriate term

Well, there's also a lot of ambiguity about what "transsexual" actually means. Some folks, for example, think it can/should only apply to people who've had surgery. And trans* has the advantage of applying to a broader community. But using the asterisk when I'm talking about myself seems weird, as though I'm trying to be vague about my own identity or haven't decided which is the best term for me.

On the other hand, "transsexual" does have something of the clinical and dismissive sound of "homosexual." It sounds like the term for an illness.

Re: It's cool if I'm actually too late to this party.

[lemposoi]

I have a friend who uses "transsexual" specifically to mean gender-misassigned, as distinct from "transgender" which is a blanket term that also includes non-binary and genderqueer genders; he also describes himself as cisgender (gender matching body, because innate gender is the only thing that determines gender, therefore a dude's body is a dude's body no matter what it looks like). I like that.

By the by, I hope your chosen meatspace name isn't Jack, because then every single trans dude I know would be called Jack. XD Not that you'd necessarily tell me anyway, but I'm rooting for Christopher (Kit) just because of that.

Re: It's cool if I'm actually too late to this party.

[kindkit]

he also describes himself as cisgender (gender matching body, because innate gender is the only thing that determines gender, therefore a dude's body is a dude's body no matter what it looks like). I like that.

I'm glad that this is his experience, but it's very much not mine. And I'll admit that I get a little frustrated/discouraged at the way this is held up to trans* people as the attitude we ought to have, as though somehow we're letting the side down otherwise. I want to change my body. It's my goddamn body, and getting an attitude from (some) other trans* people of "if you want to change your body it's because you're not well adjusted/don't have the right political attitude" that amounts to virtually the same thing as what one gets from unenlightened cis people ("how could you want to mutilate your body!") is really. not. helpful.

I don't mean this as an attack on your friend (whose relationship with his own body is none of my business) or on you. But, please be aware that your friend's experience is not everyone's, and some trans* people, including me, suffer a lot from dysphoria and the misery of being stuck in bodies that feel wrong to us. My calling my body parts by different names or pretending they're the shape that would feel right to me doesn't help. At all.

Re: It's cool if I'm actually too late to this party.

[lemposoi]

Oh, he changed his body too, and completely agrees with you (although he would never refer to any part of his physique as female, no matter what it looks like). He often has said pretty much exactly what you just said.

I really didn't mean to offer an opinion, I was just talking about the interpretations of cisgender and transsexual that I've been exposed to. Uh, though I did say that I liked the idea that a transsexual person is/can be/can still identify as cisgender, that transsexual and transgender are/can be interpreted to be different things in a sense, or can be seen as different things. I mainly like it because it's so precise in meaning. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. It doesn't mean it's the One True Way (like I'd know even if there was one).

I know trans peeps don't always agree. Some fully embrace and are empowered by terms that would make others feel dysphoric and miserable. I try not to get involved. It's none of my business, and even with best intentions I'm likely to fuck up due to innate cis fail.

Which I may have done just now by insisting on talking about this as if I know anything. I'm sorry. :(

[brewsternorth]

Trans-wise, since the topic came up elsewhere on my circle, any clothing-related triumphs to report? Any manufacturers to recommend?

Alternatively, anything else you're plotting to cook?

[kindkit]

No clothing-related triumphs, alas.

Sometime between now and Christmas I want to bake sweet potato cinnamon rolls with maple glaze (I have the recipe link somewhere but am too lazy to look for it now). And I want to make kedgeree one of these days. And I'd like to experiment more with making my own pasta. Heh. Basically my aim in life is to COOK ALL THE THINGS.

[surexit]

I didn't realise you were trans! Just a quick question - what's your pronoun preference? I should ask this when I subscribe to people, really.

[kindkit]

"He" is the right pronoun for me--thanks for asking. It's in my user info but it's kind of buried.

[surexit]

Thank you!

On a tangent, I wish that was a standard question to ask in RL, the pronouns one. It should be, but I never ask it because I feel like it's quite likely to actually cause offence in a context where it's not expected.