Block

I keep trying to find words for what is happening to me, way to express the things that run through my mind, run through my heart from moment to moment. At times I am strong full of my own self belief and solid in my conviction then moments later I struggle with myself question my decisions, choices and statements. I feel one moment real and the next a fraud.

This is a lonely gender, when I say I am a Trans male all focus is on physical transition, when are you going to transition, oh so your not transitioning yet as if this is in some way a mark of my maleness. I am male my body is not, but I am male, I don't see myself as a woman, I know I am not a man and I don't want to be a man but I am male. How does this work I hear you ask. I have spent my life so far hating the body I am in because I believed that in order to be male I had to have a male body. As a result of that thinking I have lived with self loathing and have in many different ways self abused and tried to kill the body I am in and some nights in the dark with no one around to tell me I was OK I thought I had managed it, but I kept waking up with the sun. A bittersweet sense of relief and disappointment so closely interwoven I could not separate them. If I had had the option of physically transitioning at 19 when I first found a way to tell the people around me how I felt then I most likely would of taken it but back then it was not an easy thing to do and I was more prone to self destruction I suppose. The only thing that kept me alive I think was a promise I made to my mother to not kill myself after she caught me trying to. So with that promise in my head I took the route of slow death as I  got older I became more and more despondent more and more isolated and were it not for the tireless care and patience and love of some very special people I may have succeeded but I still could not say aloud the words that burned in me I am male. I want you to recognize me as male.

Finally in my 35th year I realized I didn't want to die like this anymore, I began to look after my body and found that I could make it look more like I wanted it to in my mind this helped me to keep on. I then met some more amazing people who offered me not only acceptance but the option of being male and not physically transitioning. How is that possible? I asked myself and found within me an acceptance of my female body if I was able to define myself as male this has opened my mind up to so much the landscape of my gender and sexuality have been laid waste and change from moment to moment I have no words to define myself anymore I try and use the ones I find in websites, so far I am comfortable with Transmale or female bodied male,  and for now I believe I can find comfort in the acceptance of the community around me.

Sex Education and Stone Femme Shoes

Last night I went to see Stone Femme Shoes at the RVT, the second of six shows put on there by Wotever about sexual and gender identity and other stuff too often drawn from the personal experiences of the performers themselves. So far there have been two shows Sex Education by Josephine Wilson and this week Stone Femme Shoes by Jet Moon and both shows have blown me away. Their courage to lay it out there for the audience to look at astounds me. Some of the content is raw and it pulls at me in a way that says this is something real not imagined but felt and touched and from the real world.

Josephines' work was personally affecting to me because I could see so many parallels to my own life. It touched me in a way that was immediate and direct. Her open venerability her journey, not quite fitting into the world and searching for that place you can call yourself home reached right in and opened up old wounds I thought long buried, but also fueled a new hope that I could find that place and that even more importantly I wasn't alone. It sounds a little tired I suppose but I refuse to apologise for it, we all want to feel like we aren't the only ones be it hard or easy sharing experience is part of what builds our humanity connects us to each other and the world.

So I came to see Stone Femme Shoes thinking it would be interesting, but not really expecting it to have the same kind of resonance that Sex Education the week before did. I could not be more wrong. It was just as raw, Jet was incredible, allowing us to see her not just unapologetic and powerful but also human and real and breathtakingly honest. She shocked me and shook me made me look at myself and ask what my perceptions of femme were and how had they been affected by my need to be male and my years of suppressing my femaleness. I've been guilty of making femmes invisible in my time, I've overlooked and simplified. I couldn't do that after seeing this show. My perceptions of the femme landscape have been fundamentally changed and I'll admit I am more than a little ashamed with myself for not being smart enough or brave enough to explore this on my own. This show spoke to me or something in me and I really wasn't expecting it to, it's going to take me a while to digest it I think.

These shows so far have been so powerful to me, I think it is so important for people like myself who are asking the kind of questions we are to have people like Jet and Josephine to share themselves like this, they comfort and disturb, give us answers and questions. I am so looking forward to the shows to come and do so hope that these shows aren't a one off and that more people get a chance to see these and that I get a chance to see them again!