soup social, socializing in a dress, trans woman on television, the stories we inhabit
yesterday i was grateful for friends and soup at our second monthly soup social…
today i am looking forward to yoga men’s luncheon, yoga with anne and maybe getting my nails done…
good soup social last night... feminine heavy, but as i told my co-host, maybe we wanted it that way...
i managed to get through the evening without having any alcohol and i didn't do too badly on snack like material... i weighed in at 217.4 this morning, which i don't love, but i consider it a victory of sorts... it's often worse when i socialize around food and alcohol...
today i have yoga men's lunch... i think i will get my nails done afterward and then pick my wife up for yoga at the health club...
i wore a dress to the soup social last night... presented pretty femininely...
yesterday morning a transwoman was being interviewed around a book she had written... when she transitioned, she was married with children... her wife was able to make the journey with her and they are now wife and wife... i was glad to watch the interview with my wife... i believe it helped to provide her with a normalizing context... i have found that so important... to understand this is not a totally unique path we travel... many have gone before us... it isn't the normal of the majority... it is not rare either... and the more you are able to contextualize yourself, the easier it is... one always need to locate themselves in the world...
i told my wife that i had watched trans positive movies and documentaries while she was on block island with her mother... i told her that it helped me normalize and contextualize myself... she understands that...
and its interesting... i don't think i ever understood how important stories that relate to our personal lived realities are in helping us locate ourselves in the world... i grew up and spent most of my life as a white, heteronormative, middle class male... there was no shortage of stories in which i could see myself... when i became trans feminine i became aware that the majority of stories i was seeing on tv and in movie theaters were not my stories anymore... they couldn't help me locate myself in this new world and context that i was becoming a part of...
and then i thought about what i read in heather cox richardson this morning... it was about the story the current administration wishes us to inhabit and was trying to sell to at the munich security conference...
At the Munich Security Conference last year, just after Trump had taken office for the second time, Vice President J.D. Vance announced the U.S. was switching sides in global affairs. Henceforth, it would work to destroy the values of representative democracy and the global systems of trade and security that the U.S. and partners constructed after World War II.
In their place, officials in the Trump administration and their media allies have embraced the Great Replacement theory that says Brown and Black migration to Europe and the U.S. is destroying “western civilization.” Such migration must be stopped, they argue, and Brown and Black people purged from the U.S. and Europe. The end of equal rights for migrants will enable white Christian men to dominate society and pass laws that reinforce traditional religious and patriarchal hierarchies.
the story the trump administration is trying to sell to the country and the world is definitely not the story i wish to inhabit... i don't think it is the story most people want to inhabit...
i start to relate the story the trump administration wishes to inhabit to the story i wish to inhabit... a story of womanliness i inhabit mentally and emotionally, as opposed to physically... this story is a kind of fiction... as all stories we seek to inhabit are...
gandhi urged us to be the change we wished to see in the world... which is not far from saying... inhabit the story we wish to see in the world... so we compose a world that doesn't every completely exist even as it may not be complete fantasy either... we inhabit the stories that place us in the world...
in this way, a cuban american secretary of state denies, or skips over his cuban american heritage to claim european spanish heritage... and thus align himself with the story the administration is trying to inhabit... does he do this because he genuinely wants to inhabit a eurocentric, white christian nationalist story?... or is he fitting himself into a story driven by the political power dynamic of the day?...
i relate this to the story i am building up around my transfeminine shift... as i suspect the secretary of state of inhabiting a fiction so could i be suspected of inhabiting a fiction...
what is the difference?...
if the secretary of state genuinely and deeply desires to inhabit the story the current administration wishes the world to inhabit... then i am not sure there is a difference... except, perhaps, the story of white christian nationalism being pushed forward has the potential to harm an extraordinary number of people... indeed... such a story drove germany and the world into disaster during the second world war...
could the same case be made against the story i am trying to inhabit?...
what has become more important to me is not the reality of my body shape and configuration, but the gender story i now wish to inhabit...
we are all inhabiting stories which are not in complete alignment with the physical and historical facts of our existence... when is this dangerous?... when is it not?...
for myself, exploring transfeminine space, i have rarely felt as alive and happy within a story i was living... i don't care if the story doesn't work for every person who meets me... i care about the spirit of the story i am inhabiting... all the things i do to femininze my body are, as i have written and will tell anyone asking, more about inhabiting the story than convincing anyone or even myself that i am a woman...
while i was a little self conscious last night, i was comfortable presenting in a dress, wearing lipstick, wearing a padded bra to feminize my chest... i was able to navigate moments like a conversation about my participation in a men's discussion group when i am obviously preferring the feminine to the masculine in my expression... i was able to say i was eligeable by virtue of my amab (assigned male at birth) status... so... ok... i am happly to be with heteronormative men as long as they are willing to accept my feminine nature and presentation...
there is lots to parse about the relative fictionality of stories being inhabited in the world and the danger or not that those stories present to humanity... i can't, at this moment, make a complete case for my fiction being any different from the administration's fiction... i sense this is key to understanding what is going on and how we might deal with it...
some photographs from my morning walk...
