come on baby… play me a song, like “here comes the sun”

This has slurs about intelligence. I’m sick of blotting them out in my blogging, because they’re very real words with a very real meaning in my life. It also talks about people who commit sexual assault. If this isn’t going to work for you, stop now. And yes, I call myself “stupid”, because that’s my word to reclaim, thank you very much. 

There’s this band from Toronto called Metric. If you live close enough to the border that you can get Canadian radio, you’ve probably known them since the early 00s. They didn’t blow in the US until 2008, so that a lead singer in her mid-30s got away with the line “you’re gonna make mistakes, you’re young.” The Canadian audience chuckled, the American audience didn’t get it, and a rather salty music critic dismissed the band as being “3 replaceable guys behind a 23-year-old blonde.” The response was this video, two outstretched middle fingers at the concept, as well as at the reviewer. When I’m warming up at karaoke, it’s what I sing…I can sing the song in my sleep, as it’s the middle of my range. It’s pretty close to a psych-up song, the one that enables the real belting after two more doubles of whiskey. But the song actually contains a pretty powerful message: screw you all, we want to be ourselves.

And, well, trans activism often elicits this reply from me in my mind, because frankly I do kind of want to be myself. I used to see writing as a tool of change, but I’ve quit writing so many times, folks, whether over MRA pressure, having to delete the blog to be “allowed” in a trans women’s group on FB, or just outright being sick of being told I’m an “asshole on the internet” by middle-class white trans dudes. The message isn’t exactly subtle: it’s who the hell are you? You’re not involved, all you do is write…it makes it feel rather selfish and pointless to keep doing so.

I get asked…a lot…why a picture of me doesn’t grace this blog. You see, you can pick and choose from the answers. One is that I’m the lying fabricated sock puppet of some sad white man. Two is that I’m fond of having a job. Three would be that frankly every time my picture has moved in to the orbit of Caucasian abled trans women, the response is some combination of retarded/fat/stupid/ugly/broken & cow/pig/man/bitch. You can pick and choose between these three reasons…I sort of wish for one, because I could just walk away from this, couldn’t I then? There is also that a face really isn’t necessary for criticism unless your predilections to judge that face are somehow, pardon the pun, facially neutral. White abled trans women have failed me over and over again at being able to be so neutral, so I will just allow for the implicit bias. But why is the abuse necessary? Why the informing me how much FFS I will “need to ever pass” when that’s not what I asked for? It’s kicking the unfamiliar. Why not “Hi, what’s your name?”

This is, unfortunately, typical of the outright abuse that is used as an informal gatekeeping system within any organized commons that “trans community” is supposed to gather in. And, well, when you’re an unknown, that’s the only option you’re given. I have never been able to understand why the abuse is so necessary, but there’s always an excuse, and you think you’re out, have some basic trans-related question, and get pointed back to that commons again. The unknown party has to clear whatever the hazing ritual is. I didn’t pledge in college (WOO NON-HELLENIC ELITIST BULLSHIT LIBERAL ARTS SCHOOLS!) but I know men and women who did. Despite the public lie that there’s no more hazing, it’s as true as climate change or the pay gap. It’s benignly ignored because they consented to it. It’s benignly ignored as long as nobody dies. It’s benignly ignored if nobody calls the cops.

Is benign ignorance really something we’re comfortable with? Is it okay to mock someone’s disability or their name and then put the onus on them for leaving after they’ve been mocked and thus explicitly told they aren’t welcome in this intentional space? Do you make fun of the names of people you think you’ll ever see as an equal? No, no you don’t, or you’re an asshole a la It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The joke in that show? It’s always on The Gang. Just like the joke was always on Archie Bunker. It means that isn’t how you’re supposed to behave, and you really shouldn’t do that. When the American media tells you, in comedic form, not to mock people, maybe there’s a hidden message there.

See, you may well say I’m weak. But we need to talk about something here, and that something is microaggressions. You know, old meme, sometimes misused. But those microaggressions add up. Pretty much any day I leave the house and venture into Polite White Society, I play a fun game called “how long will it take for someone to call me a retard?” Some days, I get lucky and don’t hear it. Some days, it’ll be 3 times before lunch. Generally, the fancier I look, the less it happens…in my suit, it’s rare. In my daily wear, it’s not. It’s the white abled man’s way of reminding me I am beneath him on the food chain and in his way, and this makes him unhappy. It rarely comes from white women, and almost never from people of color. Nope, just white abled men. I know what your reaction is, though. It’s “she’s saying this so I’ll feel sorry for her.” No. I’m saying this because this is a fact of my life, and like the facts of your life, it is how it is. If you feel pity, you’re looking down on me as a person. If you roll your eyes, you’re saying it’s not a fight you can or want to take. But what I want is for you to get angry. I don’t want your money, your sympathy, or your cheapening pity. No, I want change, and the only way the dispossessed really get change is anger.

Microaggressions have this way of stacking at bad times, like when you’re depressed, your joints hurt, you’re under stress at work, etc. Because of this, these are the times you may notice things you’d otherwise ignore, like, say, a white dude slamming past you and calling you a “retard” as he chucks you into the farebox of the bus. A good day, you mutter “rude”.  A bad day, you spend the entire trip down Fourth Plain trying not to cry, duck behind the weed shop when you get off, and lose it…this happened to me just the other day. The world is full of them, and as a person who has to participate in the world to not be miserable and to have a paycheck, they can roll into a big ball by the end of the week.

This is why the culture of hazing in our community’s commons is a problem. See, when you’ve got this giant ball of bullshit you’ve accrued, it really hurts to go into a setting where you’re told about how welcoming and diverse our community is…and almost everyone’s white. And one of those people sent you 12 FB messages during the fucking meeting about what a horrible person you are. And one of those people decided to make fun of your name, a name you can’t even stand, but can’t get away from using, because our community demands the greatest “accountability”, a nice way of saying “you don’t ever get to make a mistake”, from the people who are positioned as outgroup. Because as your Twitter feed will remind you every day, serial abusers, rapists, ex-“T**F” white trans women, and my god WILL YOU SHUT UP ABOUT CAITLYN JENNER get endless second chances, but the assumption that someone who can’t handle constant microaggressions  in intentional space is somehow sinister means you get one chance and every mistake is permanent. I guess skinny white rapists are just better Calvinists…er, I mean white women….than you.

So you get reminded of this, every day. You get your name mocked, but yet you get threatened that your name will be reported to Facebook if you speak out about how we treat you (bring it). You get invited to things for “femme-of-center trans women only” and can’t figure out how to say that you can’t go because you’re explicitly unwelcome, but then people get weird that you didn’t go. Well, let’s see. If you go, and you’re adjudged “not femme enough” by the same caliber of white trans woman who’s busy calling you a man, you’ll be accused of invading space. Invade space, that makes you a monster and you’ve blown your one chance. You’re not friends with the organizer on FB or even know what name they’re using on there, and there’s no handy email address to ask. But you’re crap for not going. And then when you bring it up, you get told you’re “shitting on” femmes for pointing out that something marketed as a TRANS WOMAN’S WHATEVER isn’t open to you.  So you ask hard questions, like “if you make fun of me and call me a man in jeans and a t-shirt, what would you say about my fat ugly ass in a dress and presenting femme?” and nobody is willing to answer. I’ve been pushed into a role of being more femme than I’m comfortable with for religious compliance and to be “allowed” to transition. (This is, of course, used to deride my entire narrative, because God knows Spack wasn’t notorious in the 90s for insisting on “perfection”. Oh, wait, he *was*!)  I’ve recovered from that to “whatever” as in I present however the hell I want, which is neither butch nor femme, but I know that to a white trans woman who wants to exclude, I’ll be “not femme enough” no matter what I do. Gotta keep carrying water for that patriarchy, ladies! Calvinism is your friend!

This is why it adds up. It looks like a bunch of little things to you. But it becomes a very large stack of shit to me. It looks like nothing to you, but you’re not the outsider in the picture. It looks like nothing to you, because you’ve been insulated from the path that the undesirables are shoved into: you have to go to the support group if you want to branch out.

But then you get mocked, because the support group is just too high on bullying.  So you try the political group. And then you get mocked. You know what they used to tell us in home ec? After the second insult from the head of the household, when you’re a guest, you and yours politely excuse yourself and go. It’s the calculus that has worked through interminable schmoozefests and awful dinners. When you know you’re going to lose, you leave. If you stick it out and react, you’ll be called an asshole. If you stick it out and ignore it, it keeps happening. If you leave, you at least are responding to the signal that you’re not welcome. The fact that people feel the need to broadcast this signal confuses me, bit I have more theories than Foucault here…not tonight.

We go through enough shit every day as living, breathing trans women. I do not understand why an order that favors the skinny white trans woman with a tech job and a rape problem over the weird fatty from the wrong side of the tracks is inviolable, but something’s gotta give, and until then, the aspersion cast that “you’re just an asshole on the internet” is retorted to with “yes, but you’re the asshole who cast the first stone.” Exclusionary politics and the idea that there should be multiple classes of trans women, an organization of classes that favors the most privileged in every way but one and yet can’t seem to bother admitting it, is casting that stone. The idea that when you don’t know what doctor to see and you’re not rail-thin, the answer is “go to the support group and ask”? That’s casting stones.

You want me to carry the water of being a stupid girl from the hood for you, my ass being the one that’s much more likely to get stabbed if I got outed in my local community, every day? You can understand that maybe the burden of that water means the hazing isn’t necessary.  Maybe the burden of that water is understanding why it took me an hour to get here. Maybe the burden of that water is chancing that perhaps a newcomer can bring you something and not “who the fuck are you?” Maybe the burden of that water is holding your tongue rather than “you come from a place of deficit.”

Because until there’s a commons, political, social, or whatever (or people stop using them as methods of screening) that doesn’t come with snippy comments about one’s intellect, the size of their ass, the place they live, their ostensible education level, or the consistency of their hair, there’s no commons that’s open to all of us. So it’s your call: consider that the people mainstream white trans theology considers beneath them aren’t actually beneath you, or change your damn commons. Stop writing off trans women who don’t agree with you in absolute cultlike lockstep as “T**Fs” and aim your dislike at the people who do seek to harm us from within through something much greater than polite dissent.  The priorities you may end up needing to address aren’t all the same, and the exclusionary tactics like “trans femmes only” to narrow down trans women’s spaces to only being for some trans women will need to come to an end, but…isn’t that better if your commons actually cares about the diversity it’s guilting some white people about without actually letting in the diverse cast of characters that forms the greater reality of what trans women are generally?

Don’t pity me. Don’t tell me how great I am. Fucking change things, or make new roads. But until then…until then much like the rest of the people who have been shoved aside by a purity-obsessed community that shelters abusers and grifters because they’re thin and white…there is no road for us. Road or not, I’d rather keep being myself. Being someone else kind of isn’t true to the “authentic self” we hear so much about in trans community. Because I don’t want to be the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, I want to be myself, too, and I know I’m not alone, it just feels that way.

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white abled trans women in tech making six figures be all…

(Obligatory Disclaimer: There are certainly more than a few white trans women in tech who make six figures who aren’t at all awful. Some of y’all are pretty great, actually! In other words, this isn’t necessarily about you. If you haven’t blocked my ass in the past 3 months, or met me and panicked because omg gross fatty, this isn’t about you. Stay frosty and buy your pal Erica a beer?)

“Oh, you agreed with something *problematic*” …*block*

Don’t bother explaining. Don’t bother when you get busted making a post about how you can’t stand poor people with “low culture.” Don’t bother when one of your friends points out that no, even though someone like me isn’t the same kind of “proper” that we weren’t the people who beat you up in high school. I literally couldn’t have beaten you up in high school because we didn’t go to high school together, and I was too busy being an awful insecure bitch to beat people up. No, I wounded with words and zingers. But don’t bother with reality at all or the assumption that someone who is imperfect may still have value or may not have known someone’s friend of a friend knew someone who did something vaguely *problematic* which nobody bothered to tell you about but oops, you’re *problematic* now for not knowing. 

Just go on with your bad self. Pat yourself on the back some more that you won’t ever see another post where I explain offensive shit like the science of kicking a football or talk about scary things like choosing not to have facial surgery half because I don’t have the ducats and half because frankly I don’t want to “look abled.” I don’t want my face “fixed”, and frankly don’t care if you do or not, but I’ll support you either way…just understand that though I am by no means gorgeous, this is my face. I’ve had it for a long time, and I would be someone else if I changed it. I don’t want to be someone else.

I used to feel bad when these people back-stabbed or turned on my fat ugly ass. And you know what? You’ve invented a newspeak where more time is spent defending shitty people because they’re *~*important*~* to you rather than having nuanced discussion where the realities of being human and the actions of humans might come up.
You can be Marie Antoinette all you want. Brioche is gross as fuck anyways. Do hope the money keeps you warm at night once you’ve decided everyone who isn’t skinny, white, rich and abled is too impure for your church. Did I say church? I meant “trans community.” Really.

Also, lemme get out in front of this: Biyuti and the too often forgotten Monica Maldonado both predicted this…separately, with different conclusions, but they both said it…years ago. I tried to be an optimist, I tried to believe, I hoped for some salvation. Y’all were right, and I don’t like being all THIS PERSON SAID IT FIRST but this is le truth. I didn’t buy in, because I thought reasoned criticism could change things. I was wrong.

You can block me all you want. You can tell tales all you want. There’s a reason I never sleep with anyone like this, I’m never alone in a room with anyone like this, I never take a red cent of their money. They want people like you and I to be beasts, to be their fears.
When we are instead humans, they have no place for us in their church…er, I mean trans community. When we are sinners, our sins are unforgivable. When they sin, their sins are okay. If you grew up in a white fundamentalist Christian church, you know how it is. Some sins are fine. Some sinners are not. Your ironic tech stock options are great, but fat queer freaks who don’t have “learned” enough taste are not.

I am no beast. I’m sorry that conclusion hurts you…actually, no, no I’m not sorry at all.

Regarding the Planned Parenthood forced-birther terrorist:

I seem to be getting some clickthroughs from  We Hunted The Mammoth, where a couple of rather disingenuous actors are engaging in some bad-faith rhetoric and putting words in my mouth…so before you try to quote me out of context or make up things altogether let me be abundantly clear about a few things:

• This was a far-right orchestrated attack on reproductive health services that largely affect women. This makes it an attack on women’s basic rights. Yes, some people with uteri aren’t women, but that’s not who the far-right thinks about, and frankly it’s not degendering to say what the intent was in shooting up a Planned Parenthood.
• Pro-patriarchy activism is a cancer. That means whether it’s a “Men’s Rights” douchebag, a radical fauxminist (a “T**F”, so-called and so-misappellated), or a white Christian fundamentalist pushing it, it’s all the same hate.  You can’t granulate between the hate, because it’s all in the service of white patriarchy. (Same goes for HBSers/New Trans Separatists, a galling number of which are forced-birthers and it’s disgusting…but hey the New Trans Separatists believe rapists and Nazis are edgy but can’t deal with disabled or fat trans women, so their priorities are obviously pro-patriarchy.)
• The expectation from random anons that radical fauxminists in particular get a free pass on their pro-patriarchy activism is frankly whole-cloth misogyny, because there is literally no such thing as “benign” sexism. See, the idea that some people whose interest is in harming women get to prolong that interest on the basis of their also being women, while more understandable in a world choked by patriarchy, doesn’t mean it’s okay or that it shouldn’t be criticized.When it comes to obnoxious rapey comments about my nethers, why is it more okay when a woman makes them in the service of patriarchy than when a man does? The radical fauxminist, again what some people erroneously call a “T**F”, isn’t feminist at all, and is merely claiming feminism as they punch down on disabled women, Black women, trans women…need I go on? Punching down on women isn’t feminist, and the radical fauxminist is not radical, feminist, or a radical feminist. Here’s a handy guide: Greer ain’t MacKinnon, and Brennan sure as hell ain’t Dworkin. Don’t confuse the two: in each case one’s a pro-patriarchy shill and the other is a radical feminist. You know, like me. (Not that I think I’m one-tenth as cool as Dworkin or one-hundredth as cool as MacKinnon.)
• It’s somewhat hilarious to inveigle that I’m somehow connected to the Men’s Rights (Bowel) Movement. See, there are trans women who choose the path of hate and violence via the MRA option, since MRAs are inherently hateful, violent people by the very theology of Barnes, Elam, Price, and Esmay they defend. But if you think I’m one of them, you know less than nothing about me. Or my personal history of online and offline harassment from the jackbooted douchebags of the MRBM. Sorry, not my cup of tea. Perhaps you’ve confused me with Valerie Keefe or something? Hint: I’m not a baseball fan, an adherent to the lies of patriarchy, or someone who harasses trans women of color on Tumblr.
• It’s similarly hilarious to claim that trans women all have some animus against Planned Parenthood. Given that PP is the best informed consent access in a *lot* of places and generally works to make sexual and reproductive healthcare available to all, with a few unfortunate exceptions that aren’t the norm, guess what? Most of us are just fine with it. The minority of HBSish/New Trans Separatist trans women don’t speak for us all, and they sure as hell don’t speak for me, since in their eyes, I’m a man.
• Oh yeah, in the meantime, when the rest of us were concerned with the fact that a Planned Parenthood got shot up by some murderous douchebag, the insistence on splitting hairs and shaming people for pointing out the insidious nature of patriarchy has lead to a burial of the lede: three people are dead. If you think it’s more critical to split hairs about holding pro-patriarchy activism accountable and why we shouldn’t than to focus on the fact that some homicidal scumbucket killed three people in the name of doing harm to women’s reproductive healthcare, congratulations, you’re missing the forest, the trees, and wandered off the path, namely that a pro-patriarchy white forced-birther terrorist committed atrocities in El Paso County  and he and the movements that gave him aid and comfort must be held accountable.

No quarter for pro-patriarchy activism, no matter who engages in it. No quarter for cowards, traitors, or forced-birthers.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a goddamn drink. No more excuses, misdirection, disingenuity, or straight out lies, folks, we’ve got an enemy to fight, and that enemy is patriarchy, in all its hateful forms.

(Want to contribute to quality blogging from a radical feminist trans woman…or pay for her whiskey? Head to the Tip Jar. Or, you know, better yet, send money to your local abortion fund. I can survive without whiskey, but many can’t survive without an abortion. If you’re from outside the States, please consider the Spring Adams Fund, as it’s near and dear to my heart.)

older and wiser, maybe: ground rules for the blog

My first blog post, I kid you not, had a mission statement. It was all in emo emo lowercase, but I stand by it. I’ve learned to “love” my shift key, but in these three elapsed years, I’ve become an entirely different person, though I’d like to say I’m the same Erica…I just have vastly different priorities and realities.  Anyways, it was as follows:

i want us all to be strong and free.
no cis policing of our identities
no trans/genderqueer-on-trans/genderqueer policing of our identities
no more minimizing other trans/genderqueer people for being different from you
my body, my rules, my life.

And that’s the same ground rule that applies now. But sometimes rules require clarification, or we wouldn’t have a Judicial Branch in the US government, so here goes:

One: This is an Erica-ocracy, not a democracy. In other words, this is my blog, and I get to decide what goes.

Two: Comment moderation is common amongst blogs. Birds do it, bees do it, and many, many other blogs do it. I am not unusual in having a policy of comment moderation.

Three: If you leave screaming incoherent rage, employ personal attacks, or accuse me of various fanciful things, I’m not going to unmoderate your comment. It’s going to sit in moderation where it belongs for eternity. In other words: pro-patriarchy hate will not be tolerated, whether by a radical fauxminist (T**F, so-called), a HBSer trans woman, a truscum CAFAB trans person, an MRA, or a white holy roller who believes God allows them to decide trans women aren’t women. I am Gandalfrica, and you shall *not* pass.

Four: If you call me a “man”, an “it”, or any one of a number of the preferred terms of the transfundamentalist for referring to someone like me, there’s no way I’m going to unmoderate your comment. I’ve explained this many times: I don’t really care if some random cis person calls me a man, because they’d immediately be laughed off. In trans space, however, this is a weaponized term for anyone who doesn’t fit a very exact set of rules, and guess what: women don’t have to fit a special set of rules to be women. This applies to all women, and since trans women are women, it applies to us, too.

Five: If you’re just going to accuse me of “negativity”, please actually make some positive suggestions as to other ideas that you feel can be dealt with in a better manner. In other words, when you’re shut out all the damn time, you’re going to have some negative aspects to what you’re talking about. If you think speaking up makes me the problem, then you’re part of the problem. “Unity” in the trans community means all of us, not some of you and none of us. In other words, DON’T BE JENNIFER USHER. (Jennifer Usher = “Just Jennifer” and her bullshit misgendering and hatred toward almost all trans women.)

Six: Dissenting views are welcome, but you have to play by the rules. That means no misgendering, no racism, no fatphobia, etc. If you can’t play by these rules, you have no respect whatsoever for the forum. If you think this is “censorship”, please remember two things: I’m not the government or a governmentally-sanctioned monopoly, and yeah, you have freedom of speech, but when you say things they have consequences. If it’s more important for you to rail against fat people than it is to focus on trans liberation, I think you’ve just admitted your real priority.
six-a: Yes, I’m fat. Get the fuck over it. And don’t tell me how great it would be for me to come to your trans group, or tell me we should hang out, and then freak out because omg I’m fat. You’re free to not want to fuck fat people, though I’m sure you don’t understand the perks of a jiggly ride…your loss…but you’re not free to decide adipose tissue makes someone less worthy of existence in the trans community. Similarly, defending fatphobes, making assumptions about the alleged health of fat people, etc…get lost. Or keep up with me on my bike ride in the morning and we’ll talk. I got a sweet new pair of low-rolling-resistance Schwalbes last week.
six-b: defending fatphobic medical access policies is gross. I’m sorry you’re not comfortable your doctor has a “strict” 200 pound weight limit for hormones, but why don’t you talk to her about how bullshit that is rather than backpedal?
six-c: FAT. Seriously, suck it the fuck up, because I guarantee you it’s not as much work as I do sucking it the fuck in all the time.

Seven: If you want to speak with me directly, feel free to contact me at inchoaterica (at) gmail (dot) com. You can also say hey through the ask box on Tumblr, now that my Tumblr is back from the Tumblrdead, at http://ericainchoate.tumblr.com as long as you’re logged in. No anonymous asks because MRAssholes exist, sorry.  If you have accountability issues or similar, this is how you can contact me, or you can leave a comment with a real email address.

Eight: I forget what eight was for.

These are the ground rules. You want to play, you want my writing, this is what you live with. You have a problem with this, you are free to choose not to participate and blithely ignore my existence. But my work comes on my terms, and my terms come with that basic respect is part of the deal. If you think giving me basic respect is controversial…you’re part of the problem.

More soon.

new post on fakecisgirl: “feel it break: why GamerGate is still bad, bad news for women and minorities in gaming”

Check out my latest post on my new blog, fakecisgirl:

https://fakecisgirl.wordpress.com/2015/02/07/feel-it-break-why-gamergate-is-still-bad-bad-news-for-women-and-minorities-in-gaming/

Please follow the FCG blog for future posts, as that’s the new home for all things Erica. I’ll cross-post things here through early 2015, but after that and going forward, that’s where my blogging lives.

new post on fakecisgirl: “We’ve Got A Bigger Problem Now: MRAs Are the Top Transmisogynists”

Check out my latest post on my new blog, fakecisgirl:

https://fakecisgirl.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/weve-got-a-bigger-problem-now-mras-are-the-top-transmisogynists/
Please follow the FCG blog for future posts, as that’s the new home for all things Erica. I’ll cross-post things here until early 2015, but after that and going forward, that’s where my blogging lives. This is the first of a two-to-three part post, so there’s no time like the present to subscribe to the FCG blog if you haven’t yet!

new post on fakecisgirl: “An Open Letter To An Older White Trans Woman At Fred Meyer”

Check out my latest post on my new blog, fakecisgirl:

https://fakecisgirl.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/an-open-letter-to-an-older-white-trans-woman-at-fred-meyer/

Please follow the FCG blog for future posts, as that’s the new home for all things Erica. I’ll cross-post things here until the end of 2014, but after that and going forward, that’s where my blogging lives.

new post on fakecisgirl: “Ain’t A Damn Thing Changed: TDoR Still Fails Trans Women of Color”

Check out my latest post on my new blog, fakecisgirl:

https://fakecisgirl.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/aint-a-damn-thing-changed-tdor-still-fails-trans-women-of-color/

Please follow the FCG blog for future posts, as that’s the new home for all things Erica. I’ll cross-post things here until the end of 2014, but after that and going forward, that’s where my blogging lives.

new post on fakecisgirl: “#Gamergate? More like #GamersWhoHate, amirite?”

Check out my new post on my new blog, fakecisgirl:

http://fakecisgirl.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/gamergate-more-like-gamerswhohate-amirite/

Please follow the FCG blog for future posts, as that’s the new home for all things Erica. I’ll cross-post things here until the end of 2014, but after that and going forward, that’s where my blogging lives.

It’s Alive! …uh, sort of.

I left blogging because I had come to the conclusion that there was a new and better trans community forming online that wasn’t going to be about all the tired old BS. I also at the same time began selling off things that mattered to me and coming to terms with the fact that maybe I needed to try another tack, because blogging just was making me a drain, a burden, you name it. I’d at some point said a bit more than I should have about a couple of topics in my life because I was trying to get some Things off my Chest, and unfortunately it gave this blog a bit of a reputation. Such is life, and though I want to tell you I don’t give a damn about my bad reputation, I do because it ends up damaging the things I have to say. That said, I talked about what I needed to talk about, and have since set most of the blog to private…I’m reversing course about some of it and bringing some of my older writing back to publicly available. The all-lowercase schtick is atrocious, and I don’t really know what I was thinking, but some of it’s back! Some of it is staying just as private as it was when I bowed out of blogging.

Or, rather, I thought I bowed out of blogging. I’ve moved on to a new blog, fakecisgirl, where the first entry was about what I discovered that trans community to be: white middle-class trans separatism, just as poisonous as HBSers, but in new and allegedly “radical” clothes. Things I got shouted down for included who I fuck consensually, that I was being “too negative” in expecting white trans women not to say ‘ni**er’ (but without the asterisks, mon cheri(e)) in a public forum,  being “married to” ‘LGBT activism’, and, oh yes, not being in the right line of work.  Now, yeah, I might be a little nicer than average to the “LGBT activist” world for as much as they disappoint me, I’m a big bad butch and pretty much what shows up in textbooks next to the word “dyke”. The L in that struggle is my struggle, and has been for most of my life. It’s where I am visible and don’t really get a choice, so you’ll pardon me that I do think that counts, but that it’s not as important as centering the needs of trans women. The white seppie movement is just a new way to police the actions and lives of trans women, pushing the tentacles of patriarchal control into new spaces with new enforcers. It’s the same old shit, just in new ‘radical’ clothes.

So nothing’s really changed. The seppies, after their first few purges of the “impure” seem to have faded into nothingness, but at the same time there’s been no replacement of those online spaces that seemed more promising than the moribund messageboards ruled by the same bullying mindset. That bullying mindset is actually so much of what rules both our community from within, whether it be HBSers, seppies, “True Transsexuals”, or your garden-variety message board bully, but also rules many of our interactions externally. The widely promulgated concept that there’s just no talking it out with cis people just ain’t true, but at the same time the expectation that we repeat ourselves over and over again because cis people want us to is, well, kinda repugnant.

The same is true of our dealings with trans men: in mixed space, many of the people in charge are white trans men who engage in bullying tactics to gain and maintain power, while there’s little defense you have as a trans woman when such a guy decides to bully you out of a space. But you can’t get rid of all trans men in mixed trans space because a lot of them are do-right guys who also want the same ends of liberation. The problem is the one size fits all mindset, which does also enable both bullying and the culture that deigns some trans women disposable doesn’t work, and it cannot work if we expect to get free.

I know you’re sick of explaining yourself over and over. And you know what? There’s a point at which it’s time to say we’re done talking with those who refuse to play nice. But it doesn’t mean that the automatic assumption promulgated that some people are good and some are trash isn’t pretty messed up, or “deeply problematic” as you white folks like to say. We need to change the script, not keep re-casting the lead and hoping maybe it’ll take this time. We can’t afford Ellen Page, anyways…seriously that woman makes everything work. It’s amazing. Ever seen a really bad Ellen Page-centric movie? Thought so.

I’ve been happily blogging and tumblring away in my new home for a while now, and in fact I’ve stated we’re one and the same a couple of times, and at least one MRA hate-site has determined, in the words of their white supremacist leader, that “fcg is good old Eric Rottencroch”. Whelp, nice try, dude, but my name’s never been Eric and it’s cute that your first action of MRAsshole hate is to misgender me then make assumptions about the state of my genitalia. In fact, it’s telling that HBSers, MRAs, fundamentalist religious types that embrace patriarchal hate, and radical fauxminists (I don’t use the T-acronym anymore…) all seem to go for the same thing: misgender and talk about junk. That’s because, as you know if you’ve followed me in the past, it’s all the same hate, just with different enforcers. When it’s the same hate, and the same patriarchy, you know it’s the same old shit. And yes, I am more hated than ever by MRAs, which I think is a badge of honor of sorts. It’s worth noting that another reason I wound this blog down was that the frequency of MRA bandwagoning and threats was increasing rapidly toward the end…Eric Rottencroch doesn’t like those much, yanno.

So here’s the deal, as one of my dear friends is fond of saying: Come follow me at my new blog, http://fakecisgirl.wordpress.com and consider throwing a little e-coin in the tip jar since as you know being a single mixed disabled girl stuck in an empire in decline is costly, and think of how bad it’d piss hateful MRAs off! I’m going to be covering a couple of new things over the next month, since I decided to say F NaNoWriMo and do something else…these things include this year’s blog post on the continued failtacular state of TDoR (still “owned” by a white woman, still fucked up) and the reality of why whiteness-enforcing academically-based “social justice” movements have become bullshit. Oh yes and a piece on the disturbing spread of MRAsshole theology into trans women’s spaces, which is a direct right-wing threat from within, especially to trans women of color.

So hop over, ponder tossing a little coin (more coffee for Erica means more blog productivity…and Erica has a bad PSL habit…and is talking about herself in the third person…seriously, PSL omg PSL ALL THE THINGS), and I’ll see you on the fakecisgirl side. And yes, that is a reference to my own work, since I know some of you were wondering. I can totally be coy…or completely obtuse…sometimes both at once….