5:27am March 11, 2014

I hate blogging about LGBTQetc anything

some-of-the-patterns:

Because no matter what I say, someone will respond with an annoying derail about terminology.

Same thing here.

And I can’t easily blog about my relationship to gender, at all, because:

I’m hopelessly behind on acceptable terminology.
I’m hopelessly behind on acceptable concepts.
I can’t use the right language even when I sort of know what it’s supposed to be, or what it's not supposed to be.
I find value and meaning in concepts that are now heretical.
The trans community collectively has a hair-trigger temper.
Simply describing my own experiences – without making reference to anyone else’s – is enough to set off a giant multi-layered clusterfuck of a flamewar.
Any time I say anything, people assume I mean about ten things I don’t mean.
I don’t have the energy to say “This is what I don’t mean” ten times for every time I say “This is what I do mean.”
My observations about the trans community over time run counter to accepted wisdom these days.

I’ve literally tried to write about very simple things. And given up because it becomes so complicated, and because I’m just not capable of juggling the kind of language and concepts it takes to be socially acceptable these days. Mind you, I’m using language and concepts that, in many cases, were perfectly acceptable ten years ago. But you have to be able to adapt to an ever-shifting variety of words and ideas in order to keep up with these things.

Even simply making basic, single-statement sentences about my identity is difficult. Because people try to tie those statements to all these ideas and struggles and histories that aren’t actually as related to what I’m saying, as they think they are. And many people like me have the same problem, even when they don’t have disabilities affecting cognition or language.

And while people bicker about language, people are dying out there. And not because someone said transgendered instead of transgender.

Notes: