Three in: on burns and me
Jul. 26th, 2009 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrienmundiSo last Saturday morning at Transformus, I had some time alone on a hill in the shade while fairyhead slept. From my vantage point, I could watch people walk along the main road/path past our area. It was a strikingly different experience of wandering around pretty inebriated the night before, people watching; more pastoral, less acquisitive and grasping, but still with striking similarities.
This was my third burn (more or less in the spirit of Burning Man, but in a kinder and more resilient physical environment), and proving to be just as personally challenging as the other two. In this environment in which people are strongly and overtly encouraged to express themselves, with an eye towards weirdness, skin, freakiness and no small amount of sexuality, I again felt distinctly alien, conceptually excluded, other. I don't mean this as an intellectual exercise or stance, some position to which I had thought myself; it hit me with the full force of an emotional reaction, wound up in shock and pain and recognition. Physically, the feeling arose from somewhere deep within my chest/gut, down and back, rather than from my head or shoulders (where I usually experience similar things). I tend to privilege such feelings (the chest/gut) as more honest, "real", though I couldn't tell you why.
Watching people walk by, I felt as though I was sharing a perspective that I usually don't; I saw the various flavours of boys and girls walking past, everyone sorted into their category without conflict. I felt like I saw the modifiers hung on those categories: well muscled, hairless tattooed boy; stylish, alternative indie girl; "natural" bearded open boy and equally "natural" open hippie girl; etc. It felt like I was watching the world through the lens most people there probably shared and didn't think about; there were the girls, the boys, and everything was OK, everything was good. Only for me, it wasn't, not at all.
Seeing the world like this, feeling like I saw the perspective others used, hit me like a punch in the gut and almost made me cry out. I've constructed scenarios and arguments in my head around perspectives and assumptions like that, but I don't know that I've ever felt it before, and it almost floored me. I could feel the acceptance of most of what one could see, but in that, there was no space for me. I could feel (sorry for the New Agey woo-woo language; I'm not very good at this) my categorical assignment into class "boy" with the others, and I hated it. I was acutely aware of the overt and presumably noticed similarities between me and other members of my assigned class, and I felt an almost physical repugnance, like you'd stepped barefoot in something gross and wanted it off you as soon as possible.
I also saw the members of "girl" class, and experienced such an immediate, painful envy, or more correctly, jealousy. I did not have (traits), and I desperately wanted them. Physical, social, demeanor, manifestation: all of this and more. It was different than what I'd noticed the night before, wandering around buffered by my good friend alcohol; I'd see the pretty, the skilled, the hot and think, "I want some of that...", but it was the jumbled mess of desire to experience/possess and the desire to be/emulate, which is much more familiar (and increasingly detached from categorical assignments). This was almost completely free from desire in the sexual/aesthetic sense (which maybe I use as a kind of deflection or armour). Given the choice between two insufficiently rich categories, I wanted the one to which I was not assigned, and did not have, and the wanting of it, the not having, cut me deeply and dangerously.
I've tried to talk before about categorical exclusion in a space explicitly stated to include and honor the manifestation of all (notably, last October after Alchemy and this April after Pre-Heat), but I don't feel like I've done a good job of making it make sense to anyone. Hell, I know what it feels like, and it still reads to me like a clumsy, pointless "what if?" thought experiment. I'm trying again, because it's important. Maybe if I can get it out in a way that rings true, I can put it down at least for a little while.
Transformus had a clumsy, poorly conceived attendee census they sent out. The first question was, "Are you male, female, or transgendered?" (Despite making the obvious confusion between sex and gender, I thought it was well intentioned. The second question, "Are you straight, gay, bisexual or asexual?" was the question where everyone in my party quit in disgust and/or frustration.) While wandering around center camp, I saw that they had put up charts and graphs about the census, and was surprised to see that 5% of the responders identified themselves as transgendered. This was after my Saturday morning private freak out, and I had my armour back up and in place, but I still noted the surprise. The cynical part of me assumed that they must have meant either "transsexual" or kind of often lesbian centered or originating ft* folks of whom I'm painfully envious, but the surprise still stuck. As we wandered about during the day, I kept looking for signs of the mythical 5%, even though I knew there was no good or clear way to say I knew what I was seeing, but I made no headway.
Instead, I was filling a space that I always carry with me as a fear, and have for 28 years: the awkward, clumsy, dorky misfit teen, unattractive, socially retarded, and visibly a "guy". Despite it being outside in the sun, in a beautiful Appalachian valley, by two small lakes. By any calculation, I should have been strong, or at least stronger, there, but all that felt like it was stripped away. Similarly, this was a collection of self identified freaks, outsiders, rebels and misfits, with the stated intention of creating a space where all that could fly freely, but that promise, too, felt ripped away by unconscious categorical exclusion, because the concepts just weren't (easily) in play.
I remember at one point people were talking to a stranger who'd walked up and joined a conversation, and I was looking around awkwardly, trying to find something safe or redemptive. I saw a topless woman walking around with casual confidence that was nothing about sexuality, just the internalized reality that this was no big thing. I remembered noting that her breasts were obviously augmented but fit the lines of her body, and thought, "I could have that if I wanted it, but I couldn't pay the (social) price." I had an image of my figure, with my take on my head on top, and could only see Frankensteinian monstrosity. I imagined being the subject of attention as an outsider, attention that even if not hostile or disapproving would only cement my obvious status as Other, and I flinched and turned away.
I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Maybe I'm just trying to come to terms with a direct/emotional experience. It's not that I didn't enjoy parts of Transformus; I did. There's something about the openness, of people to one another, that lets part of my drunken/inebriated superpowers manifest without chemicals; I'm sometimes engaging, talk to strangers, help people, etc, and that's nice. But, even when I'm flexing often unused muscles, I'm very aware that I'm typed as a "boy" in the inescapable "boy/girl" model, and it cuts me. In the "real" world, I expect it; I'm tensed against it, and am armoured (though of course, I'm armoured against good things, as well; it comes at a hell of a cost). I don't think I can do "girl" in that model; the bars are too high, and I'm not invested enough in hitting enough of the optional markers to offset the usually present to qualify. I'm afraid the best I could do, should I try, is to hit "boy who wants to be a girl", and get the sympathy or pity semi-inclusion, which I imagine to be a pain akin to wrapping one's body around a large, sharp blade, and be expected to do it with the appearance of gratitude. What makes it worse is, I don't even really want "girl" in that construction, on those terms, as judged by others. But I know that "boy" in the same model is becoming increasingly impossible and painful.
I want the good things that come from inclusion in spaces like that. I want the opportunity to really let go, enjoy myself, maybe have aspects of my life changed, maybe experience freedom, like other people seem to get. I can't find a way in that doesn't hurt me, and I'm really, really tired of paying that price. I want it not to hurt so much.
This was my third burn (more or less in the spirit of Burning Man, but in a kinder and more resilient physical environment), and proving to be just as personally challenging as the other two. In this environment in which people are strongly and overtly encouraged to express themselves, with an eye towards weirdness, skin, freakiness and no small amount of sexuality, I again felt distinctly alien, conceptually excluded, other. I don't mean this as an intellectual exercise or stance, some position to which I had thought myself; it hit me with the full force of an emotional reaction, wound up in shock and pain and recognition. Physically, the feeling arose from somewhere deep within my chest/gut, down and back, rather than from my head or shoulders (where I usually experience similar things). I tend to privilege such feelings (the chest/gut) as more honest, "real", though I couldn't tell you why.
Watching people walk by, I felt as though I was sharing a perspective that I usually don't; I saw the various flavours of boys and girls walking past, everyone sorted into their category without conflict. I felt like I saw the modifiers hung on those categories: well muscled, hairless tattooed boy; stylish, alternative indie girl; "natural" bearded open boy and equally "natural" open hippie girl; etc. It felt like I was watching the world through the lens most people there probably shared and didn't think about; there were the girls, the boys, and everything was OK, everything was good. Only for me, it wasn't, not at all.
Seeing the world like this, feeling like I saw the perspective others used, hit me like a punch in the gut and almost made me cry out. I've constructed scenarios and arguments in my head around perspectives and assumptions like that, but I don't know that I've ever felt it before, and it almost floored me. I could feel the acceptance of most of what one could see, but in that, there was no space for me. I could feel (sorry for the New Agey woo-woo language; I'm not very good at this) my categorical assignment into class "boy" with the others, and I hated it. I was acutely aware of the overt and presumably noticed similarities between me and other members of my assigned class, and I felt an almost physical repugnance, like you'd stepped barefoot in something gross and wanted it off you as soon as possible.
I also saw the members of "girl" class, and experienced such an immediate, painful envy, or more correctly, jealousy. I did not have (traits), and I desperately wanted them. Physical, social, demeanor, manifestation: all of this and more. It was different than what I'd noticed the night before, wandering around buffered by my good friend alcohol; I'd see the pretty, the skilled, the hot and think, "I want some of that...", but it was the jumbled mess of desire to experience/possess and the desire to be/emulate, which is much more familiar (and increasingly detached from categorical assignments). This was almost completely free from desire in the sexual/aesthetic sense (which maybe I use as a kind of deflection or armour). Given the choice between two insufficiently rich categories, I wanted the one to which I was not assigned, and did not have, and the wanting of it, the not having, cut me deeply and dangerously.
I've tried to talk before about categorical exclusion in a space explicitly stated to include and honor the manifestation of all (notably, last October after Alchemy and this April after Pre-Heat), but I don't feel like I've done a good job of making it make sense to anyone. Hell, I know what it feels like, and it still reads to me like a clumsy, pointless "what if?" thought experiment. I'm trying again, because it's important. Maybe if I can get it out in a way that rings true, I can put it down at least for a little while.
Transformus had a clumsy, poorly conceived attendee census they sent out. The first question was, "Are you male, female, or transgendered?" (Despite making the obvious confusion between sex and gender, I thought it was well intentioned. The second question, "Are you straight, gay, bisexual or asexual?" was the question where everyone in my party quit in disgust and/or frustration.) While wandering around center camp, I saw that they had put up charts and graphs about the census, and was surprised to see that 5% of the responders identified themselves as transgendered. This was after my Saturday morning private freak out, and I had my armour back up and in place, but I still noted the surprise. The cynical part of me assumed that they must have meant either "transsexual" or kind of often lesbian centered or originating ft* folks of whom I'm painfully envious, but the surprise still stuck. As we wandered about during the day, I kept looking for signs of the mythical 5%, even though I knew there was no good or clear way to say I knew what I was seeing, but I made no headway.
Instead, I was filling a space that I always carry with me as a fear, and have for 28 years: the awkward, clumsy, dorky misfit teen, unattractive, socially retarded, and visibly a "guy". Despite it being outside in the sun, in a beautiful Appalachian valley, by two small lakes. By any calculation, I should have been strong, or at least stronger, there, but all that felt like it was stripped away. Similarly, this was a collection of self identified freaks, outsiders, rebels and misfits, with the stated intention of creating a space where all that could fly freely, but that promise, too, felt ripped away by unconscious categorical exclusion, because the concepts just weren't (easily) in play.
I remember at one point people were talking to a stranger who'd walked up and joined a conversation, and I was looking around awkwardly, trying to find something safe or redemptive. I saw a topless woman walking around with casual confidence that was nothing about sexuality, just the internalized reality that this was no big thing. I remembered noting that her breasts were obviously augmented but fit the lines of her body, and thought, "I could have that if I wanted it, but I couldn't pay the (social) price." I had an image of my figure, with my take on my head on top, and could only see Frankensteinian monstrosity. I imagined being the subject of attention as an outsider, attention that even if not hostile or disapproving would only cement my obvious status as Other, and I flinched and turned away.
I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Maybe I'm just trying to come to terms with a direct/emotional experience. It's not that I didn't enjoy parts of Transformus; I did. There's something about the openness, of people to one another, that lets part of my drunken/inebriated superpowers manifest without chemicals; I'm sometimes engaging, talk to strangers, help people, etc, and that's nice. But, even when I'm flexing often unused muscles, I'm very aware that I'm typed as a "boy" in the inescapable "boy/girl" model, and it cuts me. In the "real" world, I expect it; I'm tensed against it, and am armoured (though of course, I'm armoured against good things, as well; it comes at a hell of a cost). I don't think I can do "girl" in that model; the bars are too high, and I'm not invested enough in hitting enough of the optional markers to offset the usually present to qualify. I'm afraid the best I could do, should I try, is to hit "boy who wants to be a girl", and get the sympathy or pity semi-inclusion, which I imagine to be a pain akin to wrapping one's body around a large, sharp blade, and be expected to do it with the appearance of gratitude. What makes it worse is, I don't even really want "girl" in that construction, on those terms, as judged by others. But I know that "boy" in the same model is becoming increasingly impossible and painful.
I want the good things that come from inclusion in spaces like that. I want the opportunity to really let go, enjoy myself, maybe have aspects of my life changed, maybe experience freedom, like other people seem to get. I can't find a way in that doesn't hurt me, and I'm really, really tired of paying that price. I want it not to hurt so much.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-26 06:10 pm (UTC)I think I know the "type" you are talking about. This is probably not going to come out in any sort of comprehensible english, nor am I sure it is any useful observation, but this was very interesting to read not so much because it shed "new" light to what it is you are going through (though it does give an evocative and focused sense of what it does feel like) but because it targeted at least part of why it may be that it is hard (heh, for me) to communicate or offer something you could actually use.
I'm afraid the best I could do, should I try, is to hit "boy who wants to be a girl", and get the sympathy or pity semi-inclusion. I think I know the "type" you are talking about. And you emphatically do not class like that, while I can think of quite a few people I know who do (and not only with respect to gender), where one goes along just because you know what it is the person is trying to do. There are others who "own" their post-normative expression, and this does not necessarily mean that they present a whole, clear and complete alternative category. You often talk of competence, including YOUR competence, but it sometimes feels as if you are uncertain about so that you need to assert it, possibly open it to challenge, perhaps preemptively, and in the background you are always prepared/expect to spring and bash some metaphorical faces in its defense, I don't know.
To someone like me, you're not the avatar of competence where everything effortlessly and perfectly flows (no one is) but you have Power in the creative sense (not the Mighty White Phallus kind, you know what I mean I'd hope). Do you read most good interactions with others as either misperception or pity?
no subject
Date: 2009-07-26 06:40 pm (UTC)I don't think so, exactly. Or, well maybe I do chalk it up to misperception, at least where any gendery revelation has been made or acceptance has been offered. This isn't so much because I doubt the intentions of others, but because, from my perspective, it has yet to be tested. I don't manifest as I want to manifest, for a variety of reasons, and I worry that others assume what I am currently manifesting is a finished product, that this is as weird as it gets. If that is an assumption at play, then I feel that, should I try (and in my mind, fail, publicly and often), the cost assessment others may have made, based on an assumption that I'm only ideologically weird, or weird in certain un- or partially clothed settings, will have proven to be wrong. I expect, rightly or wrongly, to be cast aside when socially uncomfortable or costly, because this right now isn't it.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-26 08:16 pm (UTC)I know what I'm aiming for, and I think I know how, once I get there, I can use it in a social space. But until I try it I won't know how well it's going to "work". It gets longer and more complicated. Perhaps we can IM about it some time.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-27 05:16 am (UTC)My response had something to do with me thinking I thought I knew what gender alienation and envy was because of my weight (both when I was morbidly obese and how I am now, which is a 12 or 14 or whatever) denying me gender or happiness because of my envy...and then I read your words and I know I never knew what that truly meant. I cannot possibly offer empathy. I can only offer sympathy and a true desire to know, know, know you. For what that is worth.
/me ends sentimental rant
no subject
Date: 2009-07-27 11:23 am (UTC)And, thank you.