Surprise

[monster]

Originally Posted by jimhelm

No, thats not what I'm saying.

I'm saying that you'll never find a label, be it cis or qwerty...or any of them that will cure your angst. Only realizing that these labels are meaningless and limiting will release you from your confusion.

You are unique and beautiful. You are the same as all of us....and beautiful. If calling yourself erika and wearing a female costume makes you happy, fucking do it. Just don't expect these things to bring you fulfillment. Don't derive your identity from the perception of others.

This.

Except that you love the attention and the limelight I think, and for that, you need an official "persona" to present. you want to be introduced to people, so you need a name.... am I way off base?

[xoxoxoBruce]

I'll just call you Pat.

[sexobon]

I'm going to call 'em the dwellar formerly known as Ibby until 'ey adopt a symbol.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by jimhelm

Just be you. Fuck what society or pronouns say.

There ya go. I spent... err wasted a lot of years trying to please others.
Wise advice.

[Griff]

Be yourself Ibby. I think with some distance from college, living your own life, you'll find all these labels that don't fit you perfectly will seem less necessary. You're a complicated young person therefor a shortcut introduction to others may not be in the cards for you. Let the layers of the onion reveal themselves slowly from the outside in. We all do that, you've just got more onion. I could be totally of base though so just remember you can always speak freely here.

[jimhelm]

Originally Posted by E. Tolle

LETTING GO OF SELF DEFINITIONS
As tribal cultures developed into the ancient civilizations, certain
functions began to be allotted to certain people: ruler, priest or priestess,
warrior, farmer, merchant, craftsman, laborer, and so on. A class system
developed. Your function, which in most cases you were born into,
determined your identity, determined who you were in the eyes of others, as
well as in your own eyes. Your function became a role, but it wasn't
recognized as a role: It was who you were, or thought you were. Only rare
beings at the time, such as the Buddha or Jesus, saw the ultimate irrelevance
of caste or social class, recognized it as identification with form and saw that
such identification with the conditioned and the temporal obscured the light
of the unconditioned and eternal that shines in each human being.
In our contemporary world, the social structures are less rigid, less
clearly defined than they used to be. Although most people are, of course,
still conditioned by their environment, they are no longer automatically
assigned a function and with it an identity. in fact, in the modern world, more
and more people are confused as to where they fit in, what their purpose is,
and even who they are.
I usually congratulate people when they tell me, “I don't know who I
am anymore.” Then they look perplexed and ask, “Are you saying it is a
good thing to be confused?” I ask them to investigate. What does it mean to
be confused? “I don't know “ is not confusion. Confusion is: “I don't know,
but I should know” or “I don't know, but I need to know.” is it possible to let
go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are? In other
words, can you cease looking to conceptual definitions to give you a sense of
self? Can you cease looking to thought for an identity? When you let go of
the belief that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to
confusion? Suddenly it is gone. When you fully accept that you don't know,
you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly
are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting
yourself.

From A New Earth p 56

Originally Posted by E Tolle

In the quest for enlightenment, is being gay a help or a hindrance, or does it not make any difference?

As you approach adulthood, uncertainty about your sexuality followed by the realization that you are "different" from others may force you to disidentify from socially conditioned patterns of thought and behavior. This will automatically raise your level of consciousness above that of the unconscious majority, whose members unquestioningly take on board all inherited patterns. In that respect, being gay can be a help. Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not "fit in'' with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness almost by force.
On the other hand, if you then develop a sense of identity based on your gayness, you have escaped one trap only to fall into another. You will play roles and games dictated by a mental image you have of yourself as gay. You will become unconscious. You will become unreal. Underneath your ego mask, you will become very unhappy. If this happens to you, being gay will have become a hindrance. But you always get another chance, of course. Acute unhappiness can be a great awakener.

From The Power of Now p.110

[Sundae]

You are the same as you ever were to me, in that you are Ibram and have always been. Also this is obviously a journey not a destination, and again I think it's a path you've been on since you came here.

So congrats for being all official. Just don't stop wearing the occasional Tennant Dr Who style suit with baseball boots. I like that look x

[jimhelm]

what are baseball boots?

[Ibby]

I feel like those of you who are saying, you dont need labels and stuff, are.. missing something somewhere, but I don't know how to explain it better. I get a little defensive, I must admit - and I want to explain why its not so much labeling or anything as it is... DE-labeling, from the way I look at it. The broad middle ground I'm staking out by embracing "labels" or, as I look at them, identifiers, gives me much more freedom than the normative assumptive labels do - and a lack of labels on a personal level turns into assumed labels, nearly universally.

When you decide what to wear for the day, you decide what sort of persona you're going to project for that day. If you wear a suit, you project formality and business and such. If you wear sweats, you project either a sense of athleticism or a sense of lazy lack-of-style. I know lots of people who wear sweats like jammies, around the house or alone or whatever, but who wouldn't go out in public in them, because they don't feel personally comfortable being the sort of person who wears sweats out in public. Not everybody cares what persona they project, but i reject the notion that caring about how you are perceived by others is the same as "deriv[ing] your identity from the perception of others." Its not that I need other people to accept my identity before I can; its that, now that I've accepted that my identity fundamentally lies outside the wide box labeled male, I'm less comfortable having people assume I'm male*.

I just finished skimming the "where all the black people at?" thread and noticed some good discussion on identifying terms for people - in this case, "mexican" versus "hispanic", or "american indian" versus "native american" versus, uh, "indian as in from you know INDIA". It's, in a way, this sense of identity (and terminology thereof) that I'm using here. If I were born in New Mexico or Arizona to parents of Mexican decent, I could identify as a Mexican or an American or a mexican-american or a Hispanic or any number of related, sometimes exclusive, sometimes inclusive, always polycombinational terms, right? And while maybe I couldn't argue very well that I'm not Hispanic, or of broadly spanish-american descent, I -could- argue that I'm not Mexican as a person born in America who never lived in Mexico, I could argue that I'm not American (or at least American in citizenship only) as someone of non-USA descent, etc. As it stands, even, I was born in Texas to Alabamian parents - but I am not Texan, and I am not Alabamian, regardless of my place of birth or ancestry, and considering i've hardly lived in either state most there would agree with me that I'm not "from" there in anything but the causal sense. I've adopted Vermont as my home state, even if I'm still a flatlander to them. But we are as a country (and to a great degree, the "first-world" countries are all in the same boat) VERY ready to accept people transcending state boundaries in identity, less ready to accept people transcending national boundaries in identity (but still friendly to being a ______-American), but very far from ready to accept people whose identity or identities transcend gender norms, ignoring the fact that gender norms and biases are at least as arbitrary as state borders, and in many ways much MORE arbitrary and unrelated to physical (or geographic) characteristics. But that doesn't mean a Puerto Rican or Venezuelan or Brazilian should get called a Mexican, just cause theyre from south-of-here (or, in the exact same vein, Koreans or Japanese or Mongolians should get called Chinese just for being from Asia), even if the borders are arbitrary, right? Because the CULTURE isn't, and the people of most countries are at least proud enough of their country to want to be recognized as not being from a neighbor, no matter how similar we find the two sides of the distinction.

It's in that sense that making my identity public, and using "labels" to identify myself, is important to me. Being read as, treated as, called a "man", a "guy", a "dude", a male, feels as accurate to me as if you called me a Canadian cause I'm from the North American continent. Its not that I expect you to treat me different as an American or a Canadian, and its not that I'm forcing myself into a little box called "america" (or "girly") versus where you assumed I was... but what we CALL things is VITALLY important to how we think about things, and letting what I feel to be a limiting and inaccurate category for me to continue as one of my defining characteristics without standing up and saying, "no, you are wrong, that term is not one I would describe myself with" lets me continue to be erased, continue to be treated in ways I don't like, continue to be forced in peoples' minds into the categoric box of "male" that I am not comfortable with.

Coming out doesnt limit or label or categorize me any more than any other identity ANYBODY holds does. Every single one of you has dozens of Identities. American. British. Musician. Salesman. Mother. Brother. Liberal. Conservative. Butch. Femme. Anything, any identity, is something you hold dear to yourself; not a limiting factor, not a box, but a tag, an indicator, a part of how YOU think of YOURSELF.

*I'm using male to refer to masculine gender roles rather than sexually male characteristics in this context. Arguably, "boy" or "man" is the more proper term - male typically indicates male physical sex rather than masculine identity - but wording it this way fits my prosaic style better, I feel, and sex/gender language dichotomy be damned

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by jimhelm

what are baseball boots?

Plimsolls, of course!

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by jim

I don't not know who I am. I know exactly who I am and I have never for a second doubted it. But I can't agree with you that looking at the range of identities and "defining" yourself as one - or identifying with one, because i feel like this makes a HUGE leap in assuming that identifying with a group as the same as defining yourself as, and limiting yourself to, that same set of identifying markers - is something that is INHERENTLY anti-peacefulness, anti-clarity, anti-acceptance of self. Identifying as part of a broader community based on my lack of identification with a larger community that I've been told for 20 years I'm part of, does not, to me, sound like what is being described as a limiting, confused experience.

I am not confused. I am not questioning. I am making public the degree to which I am certain that I will never fulfill the gender roles associated with the identity I've held up until now, and the degree with which I identify with and feel I am part of the broader trans* community.

[jimhelm]

Ok. I'll shut up.

I may have misunderstood what you were saying about feeling dysphoric. And I may be projecting my unconscious opinion that all gender benders are confused....by definition.

Didn't mean to offend... I accept you as you regardless of what color bra you're wearing.

How long until we can tease you about it? I've got some good ones...

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by jimhelm

Ok. I'll shut up.

I may have misunderstood what you were saying about feeling dysphoric. And I may be projecting my unconscious opinion that all gender benders are confused....by definition.

Didn't mean to offend... I accept you as you regardless of what color bra you're wearing.

How long until we can tease you about it? I've got some good ones...

tease away, jimbo.
I know you weren't trying to be offensive or anything - thats why I responded with as much detail and intellectual explanation as i could, rather than with scorn or just ignoring you (not to say you WERE legit offensive, just... a little off base). I understand that to people who have never felt the chasm between gender roles, to those that HAVE always felt comfortable with gender, its hard to really grok everything that goes into gender identity, especially in relation to those outside the mainstream.
Part of the reason, I think, that people assume that to be outside the binarist system is to inherently be confused, is that its hard to shake the concept that there are two right ways, broadly speaking, to define or identify with gender, and those that fall outside the mainstream intend to figure out or transition towards one of the two mainstream poles... when I feel like gender, as an entirely social, entirely arbitrary construct, leaves an infinite number of potential identities. The sort of coming-out that I'm doing is saying that "the position on the gender spectrum that I've always taken and lived in is one that I am not comfortable defining as part of the cis male part of the spectrum", and little more. im saying that the conventional definitions don't fit my identity - not that the identity i've held is wrong or flawed, just that it lies outside the part of the gender spectrum generally defined as male.
I'm glad I better understand why you wonder if I'm making a wise choice. While it is often extremely hurtful or triggering to question a trans* person's identity the way you have made me question it, I have the huge luxury of being in a comfortable enough position to discuss how exactly I feel and why, and being questioned on (or questioning on my own) the decision only serves to help me articulate it better.

All these things I've been saying are going to be so helpful to me in explaining to my parents - who are, for the most part, more "your" generation (in the sense of the broad audience of the cellar) than "my" generation (some of you are of my own generation more than of my parents', or of the one in between mine and my parents', but on gender issues I have to say I think its fair to lump most of in with the older generation considering the extreme gap between young 20-somethings on this and older 20-somethings/30somethings/older) how I feel. I'm glad I'm catching, not flak, but reasonably legitimate questions on the decision. The thing that, for me, most accurately and helpfully refines my political beliefs is being questioned on them; it seems that having my identity questioned only helps me articulate more accurately the identity I mean to explain. So, thank you!

[infinite monkey]

People try to put us down
Just because we g-get around
Not tryin' to cause a big sensation
Just talkin' 'bout my g-generation

[dungeonsandlizards]

Kudos to you for sharing that Erika. I got your back.