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Sep. 22nd, 2020 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressA snippet from meeting notes at work today:
It is a hard part of identity, realizing what gets to be "normal" for you, and what you have to do to denormalize and disrupt that privilege. I am white. I am able-bodied (not properly sighted, though also the sort of blind that is correctable with a disability aide). I am upper-middle class (and employed, despite pandemic). I am close enough to conventionally attractive to not stand out. I am acceptably sized (a little short, but if read as a girl that's "cute").
Really, all my marginalizations are invisible. Which I think is why I am as loud as I am and why I fight as hard as I do against the indifferent evil of "oh I don't know anyone who...". Because it's fully possible for me to wrap up and smile blandly and pretend you're right, that you *don't* know anyone queer or crazy or magic0 or with a trauma-history. And I was talking a wee bit with a Black coworker about it, because on the one hand, it's hard to be hidden and assumed, but it's also hard as hell to never have the option of hiding in the first place.
(Yes, of course I hide sometimes. I hid for three fucking years at work that my pronoun was *not* she and my title *not* miss. Because if nothing else, it meant I could stay on my own merits --if no one knows I'm queer, I don't have to wonder if that's the real reason I was let go from the position. The arguments around "should tenure exist" are varied and some of them are quite good, but this is a huge fucking advantage, that I could hide for three years in exchange for being out and loud and there not being a damn thing they could do.)
((The Catholic school never knew I was nonbinary, but I don't think I was as quiet as I could've been about being bisexual. I will never know.))
(((And of course, my school1 is in an extremely liberal district in Massachusetts, was I ever really at risk? I'll trade you that question for "how many of my coworkers do you think have misgendered me (in my hearing even) in the last week?".)))
Anyways, I've been trying hard to be more aware of what and who I am. And I've also been embracing the idea of being LoudLoudLOUD about it, because it's _always_ been "queer as in fuck you" for me, I read Auntie Kate's "My Gender Workbook" before I ever got internet access of my own2.
Which means I am always going to be the one who introduces themself with their pronouns, but maybe I am also going to be the one who remembers to include "white" in their description as well.
Because if we stop assuming that you only have to identify if you're abnormal, maybe we can break some of the parallel assumptions about how deviation from the norm is shameful, bad, and to be punished.
I dunno. Lotta weird brain these days. I love you and hope you're well, in all the ways you identify.
~Sor
MOOP!
0: Wrote pagan, paused a long while, replaced it with this. Pagan is probably the most accurate word about how I do organized religion, but the whole point is that I *don't* actually do organized religion, I just talk to several different gods on occasion, including ones who I neither worship nor follow, and I follow ritual and prayer as they strike me and I can figure out how I'm meant to write them. I have grown much more comfortable with my spirituality and my religion over time0a, but I still don't have a better word for it. Please do leave comments/suggestions/thoughts on this if it resonates!
0a: Suck it, staunchly atheist asshole ex-boyfriend. s.
1: Quick reminder, since there's some new folks and it's been a while --I don't mention the specific district I teach at online, for ~liability~ reasons or secrecy or whatever. It's not _actually_ that secret or probably difficult to figure out (and lord knows I've almost certainly casually fucked up somewhere along the way) but that's a thing.
2: Which more specifically means "before I was a person", since I ascribe the boundary between "bland child vessel who is positioned to become real someday" and "person" to about the point when I replaced my blood with ink and never looked back. End of eighth grade I picked up my weird little barely-used diary and _filled_ it in a few months straight and just a wee bit later started tumbling those thoughts into the weird online journal I'd started up and that was that. I've been Real since December 27th, 2003 and it's nice to think that's more than half my lifetime past by now.
The ways people choose to identify themselves and introduce themselves are super interesting. For instance –I was the only person to specify my pronouns in this meeting. [coworker] was the only person to specify what country he came from (El Salvador)
It is a hard part of identity, realizing what gets to be "normal" for you, and what you have to do to denormalize and disrupt that privilege. I am white. I am able-bodied (not properly sighted, though also the sort of blind that is correctable with a disability aide). I am upper-middle class (and employed, despite pandemic). I am close enough to conventionally attractive to not stand out. I am acceptably sized (a little short, but if read as a girl that's "cute").
Really, all my marginalizations are invisible. Which I think is why I am as loud as I am and why I fight as hard as I do against the indifferent evil of "oh I don't know anyone who...". Because it's fully possible for me to wrap up and smile blandly and pretend you're right, that you *don't* know anyone queer or crazy or magic0 or with a trauma-history. And I was talking a wee bit with a Black coworker about it, because on the one hand, it's hard to be hidden and assumed, but it's also hard as hell to never have the option of hiding in the first place.
(Yes, of course I hide sometimes. I hid for three fucking years at work that my pronoun was *not* she and my title *not* miss. Because if nothing else, it meant I could stay on my own merits --if no one knows I'm queer, I don't have to wonder if that's the real reason I was let go from the position. The arguments around "should tenure exist" are varied and some of them are quite good, but this is a huge fucking advantage, that I could hide for three years in exchange for being out and loud and there not being a damn thing they could do.)
((The Catholic school never knew I was nonbinary, but I don't think I was as quiet as I could've been about being bisexual. I will never know.))
(((And of course, my school1 is in an extremely liberal district in Massachusetts, was I ever really at risk? I'll trade you that question for "how many of my coworkers do you think have misgendered me (in my hearing even) in the last week?".)))
Anyways, I've been trying hard to be more aware of what and who I am. And I've also been embracing the idea of being LoudLoudLOUD about it, because it's _always_ been "queer as in fuck you" for me, I read Auntie Kate's "My Gender Workbook" before I ever got internet access of my own2.
Which means I am always going to be the one who introduces themself with their pronouns, but maybe I am also going to be the one who remembers to include "white" in their description as well.
Because if we stop assuming that you only have to identify if you're abnormal, maybe we can break some of the parallel assumptions about how deviation from the norm is shameful, bad, and to be punished.
I dunno. Lotta weird brain these days. I love you and hope you're well, in all the ways you identify.
~Sor
MOOP!
0: Wrote pagan, paused a long while, replaced it with this. Pagan is probably the most accurate word about how I do organized religion, but the whole point is that I *don't* actually do organized religion, I just talk to several different gods on occasion, including ones who I neither worship nor follow, and I follow ritual and prayer as they strike me and I can figure out how I'm meant to write them. I have grown much more comfortable with my spirituality and my religion over time0a, but I still don't have a better word for it. Please do leave comments/suggestions/thoughts on this if it resonates!
0a: Suck it, staunchly atheist asshole ex-boyfriend. s.
1: Quick reminder, since there's some new folks and it's been a while --I don't mention the specific district I teach at online, for ~liability~ reasons or secrecy or whatever. It's not _actually_ that secret or probably difficult to figure out (and lord knows I've almost certainly casually fucked up somewhere along the way) but that's a thing.
2: Which more specifically means "before I was a person", since I ascribe the boundary between "bland child vessel who is positioned to become real someday" and "person" to about the point when I replaced my blood with ink and never looked back. End of eighth grade I picked up my weird little barely-used diary and _filled_ it in a few months straight and just a wee bit later started tumbling those thoughts into the weird online journal I'd started up and that was that. I've been Real since December 27th, 2003 and it's nice to think that's more than half my lifetime past by now.
no subject
on 2020-09-23 11:48 am (UTC)no subject
on 2020-09-23 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2020-09-25 02:28 am (UTC)That being said, mama nature is one of the four major gods in my pantheon, one of the three gods I wear on my necklace, and one of the two gods I actively pray to on the regular. Stars and weather and forests and rocks and the ocean are all fiercely spiritual things for me.