Fair and Sound: DegreeStory Replies

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Original publication: December 7, 2013

Re: University of Phoenix Online

Associate of Arts in Business

Bachelor of Science in Information Technology for Visual Communications

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Article #1 – 100 words answering the question:

Is your pay fair?

Fair, But Not Very Fair

There are dozens of great lines in “The Princess Bride” like “Never go up against a Sicilian when Death is on the line” or “Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” The one that holds the most truth, however, is, “Life isn’t fair, Princess. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell something.” What is true about life is true about work. I have never objected to working for a living, but as often as not I’ve found myself in a situation where I was living only to work. I’m an artist and a writer, so I am constantly driven to create—but I’ve rarely been lucky enough to get paid for my art or writing. So, I usually had a full time job, or two or three part time or contract jobs just to pay the bills. I would spend eight hours at work, as much as 3 hours communing to and from work, and another eight hours working on projects at home. I would get a few hours of sleep, and do it all again the next day, squeezing meals in when I had half an hour to spare.

In all honesty, my creative pursuits create more work than I could manage if there were forty-eight hours in a day. Initially, I took whatever job I could get to pay the bills and focused on improving as an artist and writer. Unfortunately, the jobs I could get did not pay well, and impeded my progress as an artist and writer. I returned to school to get a degree, and choose a major that would allow me to combine the technical experience gained from my employment with my art and writing proficiency. For four years, I split my time between work and school, with little or no time to spend on art and writing. Once I graduated, with a BS in Information Technology for Visual Communication, I found that it was a difficult as ever to find a full time position in my chosen field. I took contract and freelance jobs to build my portfolio. The pay as a contractor was half an order of magnitude better than I ever had before, but the freelance jobs really only paid in experience.

I’ve done the research, and the average salary for an illustrator, or graphics-, web- or ui designer in my area is fair enough to pay off my student loans, and cover living and commuting costs with a little left over for savings. Assuming I was working full time at my current billing rate, I would be willing to call it fair pay. Prospective employers are comfortable with the salary I am asking for, so I know it is a realistic number. Unfortunately, they’re more comfortable with applicants who are already established in similar positions at similar companies. It’s a dubious comfort to know I could count on fair pay if I could count on fair play.

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Article #2 – 100 words answering the question:

Would you choose the same degree again?

Timing Truly Matters

As much as I hate to say it, I would not choose the same degree if I could do it all over again. I am an artist and writer, and I intended to pursue a dual major in illustration and literature but was never in a financial position to support myself and go to school at the same time. Unable to get a job as an artist or writer, I settled for jobs that allowed me to pay the bills while focusing on art and writing on the side. The best work I was able to get was in IT contracting. I had the aptitude for working with computers and coding, and the creative skills for graphic and web design, so it was common for clients or employers to ask me to do work on their websites. So, when I had the opportunity to go back to school I chose a degree that combined my talent and skill with my experience.

The University of Phoenix did not offer the courses or degrees I truly wanted, but at that time it was the only school I knew of offering online courses, allowing me to coordinate my study with work. I was tempted by the prospect of being a web designer with a five- to six-figure income, doing work that called on my creative and technical skills equally. I was optimistic about finding work, because it was work I was already doing and the Internet was recovering from the dot-com collapse. I am still confident in my ability to succeed as a web designer, but I’m more confident in my ability to succeed in my original goals as an artist and writer. Assuming I can pay my current student loans and afford future classes, I hope to pursue a Master’s Fine Art Degree in Digital 3D Art to make the most of the skills I am developing now.

It Takes a Village to Break a Child

I do not often get comments on my blog; if I exclude the pingbacks, spam and my own replies, I’ve received twenty-two comments from ten different individuals since I started the eye of paradox two years ago. Four of those people have identified themselves as transgendered, and like every transgendered person I’ve known, it has affected their lives as bad or worse than mine and I do not have to explain myself to them to be understood. For a long time, I’ve understood that this condition is difficult or even impossible for people who have not experienced it to comprehend. In order to live with normal people, the “cisgendered” if I use the term that’s come into use to describe those who identify with their birth sex, I’ve had to go to incredible lengths to comprehend and empathize with them. I’ve tried many, many times to find a way to describe what it feels like to live with this condition, hoping to make it easier for my family and friends to understand me. As I mentioned, I do not always like what comes out when I write on this topic, because it is a very intensely emotional issue and intensely emotional writing just encourages people to accuse me of being mellow-dramatic. I honestly expect most people to be driven away by the things I have written. Growing up, it did not take me long to learn how incredibly unsympathetic most people are about this issue. I was never asked to explain myself. With the exception of my adopted mother, who confronted me when I was six to ask if I wanted to be a girl, no one ever asked me why I acted like a girl. By the time she asked, I knew better than to admit it, since every other time someone noticed I was just slapped, spanked, or jerked around while being criticized for acting like a girl and being commanded to stop. That does not mean I was not asking myself why I acted like a girl. Even though the question was often on my mind, the only answer that ever rang true was the one that the facts denied.

Because I was being held to a standard of behavior I truly did not understand and which did not come naturally to me, I had no choice but to conceal my pain and confusion in order to conform to that standard. As I’ve said before, it had been made clear to me that my “disobedience” was justification for punishment, rejection and abandonment, so it did not take long before I was conditioned to assume that anyone who enforced the male standard of behavior could not be trusted. I could not ask anyone why it hurt so much to not be a girl or why nothing about being a boy made me happy. I could never understand why compliments and praises highlighting my qualities or accomplishments as a boy left me feeling hurt, hollow and unhappy. I did at least feel relief and gratitude for the fact that it made people happy with me, and at the time I thought that was what happiness was. I was not always caught on the double-edged sword of gender conflict. No one can be, because one thing that Sophia Marsden pointed out is true; life is full of things that can be appreciated no matter who or what you are. In fact, I pretty much lived for those things, using them to distract myself, and in my preoccupation I pretty much forgot myself and acted like a girl — perhaps a tomboy, I should say, since I managed to get away with it more often than not. If there is a bright side to my childhood, it was that I found ways to be as much like a boy or a girl as I wanted to, as long as no adults were observing me. Unfortunately, I was never comfortable with my genitalia, or the fact that the sensitive organ served as a constant reminder of why I was not a girl. It pissed me off that I was never allowed to let my hair grow, and I hated the clothes I was forced to wear.

The simple fact is, there was always something bringing the gender conflict to the fore. No matter how hard I tried to be obedient, practical and realistic, the notion of myself as a boy never took hold. I was always caught off guard by the realization that I was male, and even when I was trying my hardest to keep that fact in mind, I would look at the girls around me with admiration and envy, forever underscored with an ache of loss. I did not really wonder why, because I knew why I felt this way, and knew it was forbidden, so I simply did not allow myself to think of it most of the time. I just locked myself away and died a little more each day. In a sense, when I got my hands on an anatomy book and finally found out why I was not a girl, I understood what was expected of me. I still did not know why I felt like a girl, and I still do not know. I do not know why I feel like I am lying whenever I act like a man. It is a feeling that makes me feel so sick, I cannot even get past the stupid “male or female” check-box on a job application. I mean, if you look at me and assume I’m just another guy, then, well, whatever, I cannot blame you for what you see, but if you ask me, I no longer know what to say. I am no longer a child to be threatened with abandonment, I am no longer willing to give anyone the power to reject me. I am more than willing to do any job asked of me, but I am no longer able to ask for a job, and if I care even an ounce for my own well-being, I cannot say anyone can pay me enough to endure what I have to do to myself in order to work. I got into temping and contracting because, for the most part, I am never in a position to ask for work, I am asked for; unfortunately, even that is drying up, and once my savings run out, I’ll be stuck homeless in Alaska with winter around the corner. The scary thing is, that doesn’t frighten me. I’m long past the point where I can be motivated by fear. Or, I am more afraid of compromising myself ever again.

I do not want to die, and I do not want to quit, but I do not trust anyone, I know I do not fit in, and even though there are people who understand and care, I know they have to take care of themselves first. I have made little appeals for anonymous help because I know I need it, and since I do not really expect anything to come of it, I really feel no guilt for asking. When you hurt enough, you scream. It’s human nature. Walking by and pretending not to hear the screaming is too. I really have no idea what I would have done if anyone had stopped and asked what was wrong. I would really be at a loss if someone thought they could help and offered. If someone wanted to throw money at me, no strings attached, I’d take advantage of it; it would be stupid not to and even if I’ve lost the will to go on living like this, I’m still too stubborn to die. I go through these spells of crying for help unable to decide for myself if they’re the remnants of my morbid sense of humor, a way to make it clear that I can manage a cry for help without killing myself, or simply an example of believing in people even if I am no longer able to trust anyone. In the end, the reason I write is not in the hope of salvation, but in the hope of understanding the answers to questions I do not even know how to ask. The people who shaped my childhood did not understand me, and their actions hurt me because they were carried out by kind and caring people I depended on. I could not tell you who is responsible for breaking my spirit, or failing to simply ask “why does this boy think he’s a girl?” My father stepped out of the picture when I was three, my mother’s parents convinced her to put me up for adoption when I was four, I was passed around between extended family members and foster care like a hot potato. Someone, perhaps more than one, saw my natural personality as a problem and whatever they did, the damage was done by the time I found myself in a safe and stable environment. I guess that just means that sometimes it takes a village to break a child.

Point Penetrating Points Overlapping

A number of my posts, particularly the ones dealing with transgender issues in my life, have been written on a long, dark night of the soul. It can be difficult to come back and read what I’ve posted and resist the urge to delete what I’ve written, because of how dark they are. I have moments when I think, if ever a family member happened to read them, some of what I’ve written could really hurt them. That was never the intention, and yet, there is a ring of truth to the posts I am not able to deny. It is an unfortunate fact that I’ve been hurt a great deal by people who never meant me harm because of things neither I nor they had any control over. It is not their fault that efforts to encourage my growth and development as a son or brother caused me so much pain; they were simply responding to what they perceived me to be. Our current society is the end product of thousands of generations of people struggling through life trying to make sense out of it. If that resulted in the division of human traits into masculine and feminine, and if the cultivation of gender roles led to a society that could not understand that there was a difference between the things that make people who they are and the things that make them what they are, it is not possible to assign fault or blame to any specific group, let alone a given person. As much as it would have made a difference in my life to have been raised among people who were more perceptive, or in a society that was more accepting of individual differences, I would still have grown up with the more difficult problem of being a girl in a boy’s body.

I can look back now and say it would have been better if I had been more assertive, but like most people I did not come into the world with all the answers and because I understood the reality of my situation, I tried to adjust to it. It took a long time to prove to myself that I was right from the beginning to think of myself as a girl. I had to destroy myself trying to be a boy and a man to understand that the only way I could survive as a person was by being true to myself. That was hard, and it is still hard, because there is nothing I hate more than the idea of being a woman trapped in a man’s body. How can I possibly be true to myself when I am betrayed by my own flesh? What future is there for a living contradiction like this? So, even when I am tempted to regret allowing myself to be forced into a role I cannot endure, I can understand how I could try to hard to be what everyone else expected me to be. I tried to be the person everyone thought me to be in the hope that, if I could not hope to live for myself, I could at least live for the people I cared about — the people who cared for me. I had no idea it would cost me so much, or that in the end I would be driven into isolation and have to face the simple, horrible truth of my existence. I lived a lie, and that is why I do not feel deserving of the love my family and friends have had for me. I hate the person I tried to be, and in that irrational way of such emotions, I hate everyone who ever loved that person. I’ve never been the type to hold on to negative emotions; I know that they arise in response to things I perceive to be wrong, cruel and unfair. I could never point a finger of blame, because I keep analyzing the problem until I understand it and what I did, or did not do, to bring it about.

I am a girl in a male body because I found myself and believed in myself, and it ended up hurting me because I allowed the circumstances I was in to overwhelm me. I knew the truth and allowed myself to doubt it. That doubt was all the leverage needed to turn my life into hell. I tried to deny the truth and struggled to believe the lie I created to survive in the world of doubt I had embraced. Why? Do the facts really matter if they contradict the truth? Is reality worth holding onto if you have to dispose of yourself in the process? I could never silence these questions, and part of me struggled to hold onto the one truth I had. I know there have been times when I wondered why this was happening to me, and there are answers I could give myself, but in a lot of ways it was not the question that mattered. If I tried to look at my life as a story, then everything that happens is just part of the plot, and if I think of myself as the protagonist of the story, then it’s all a puzzle I have to figure out. Even if I just call it a life, then the challenge of every experience is to find meaning in what is happening to me. When I open my eyes and consider what is happening with everyone all over the world, then it begins to look like a proving ground, and the purpose of everything that happens in life is to find out what it takes to destroy us. When I think about it, though, I feel like I’ve survived too many things that should have destroyed me, often in ways I would have preferred not to have survived. Even worse, it often seems that it has been because of my weaknesses, not my strengths, that I have been able to survive. I mean, if a person can really die of a broken heart, I could have died a thousand times a day.

The hardest thing to endure is the idea that this is a world without magic and miracles, a world where it is not possible to transform this body of mine in a way that would make it mine. I cling to my sanity in the face of a reality in which the very thing that supports my existence is the thing that denies me the ability to truly live. I’ve always known that there are others who have experienced a conflict between who they are and what they appear to be. I also know that appearances matter no matter what anyone says to the contrary. It is not necessary to be gender dysphoric to feel betrayed by one’s body. It is enough to simply look different. In many ways, it is easier to accept what other people look like than to accept our own appearance. I always had a hard time with the fact that I appeared perfectly normal to other people but felt horribly deformed, with parts of me literally turned inside out. I feel the distortion of my body image by my physical senses as a constant dislocation and disorientation, like I have two bodies, a male body overlapping a female body — which is a lot like wearing over-sized boots all over. That should go a long way towards explaining my instinctive understanding of four-dimensional space, as well as my intuitions about the nature of the mind, soul and spirit. Even as a child, I found it easy to comprehend magic and miracles in terms of multi-dimensional functions, though even now it’s difficult to describe what is clear in my mind using words. Of course, what I think of and associate with the terms “magic” and “miracle” are a bit different from what I find in most literature. For a while, I thought it might be more appropriate to use the term “psychic” or “psionic” instead, but even those terms are met with suspicion and skepticism these days, and I can understand why.

I recall pointing out somewhere that magic is the ability to change reality in spite of what you believe, while a miracle is a change in reality based on belief, and that both are expressions of psychic potential. These were clarifications I made to distinguish the concepts for my own use, both in fiction and in philosophy. As far as I am concerned, there should be no stigma attached to these words, or any mystery or occult terms passed down into the English language, even if scientists and skeptics do like to view them with contempt. Concepts are necessary to communicate ideas, and even if there is no scientific basis for their use, they provide a rich vocabulary for expressing ideas that are otherwise hard to articulate. It’s an approach I’ve been using all along, in previous posts. It was inevitable what I would reach a point where I would feel the need to comment on my use of such terms, just as it is inevitable for a child born in the wrong body to wish for metamorphosis. If all I had done was wish for change, I would have lost it a long time ago. The part of growing up and outgrowing fairy tales and children’s fantasy would have left me hopeless. So, I had to put more effort into searching for a way to change, which meant doing my own research into miracles, magic and medicine. Since I did not have money to throw into it, I was pretty much limited to what could be found in libraries and book stores or what could be learned from other people. It is not hard to find people with strong beliefs about magic or religion, and medical practices are pretty well documented; it did not take long to conclude that what I was looking for was beyond the reach of medicine, and what most people who believed in magic or divine intervention would consider possible.

I should say, anyone who believes in God would say He has the power to transform a body, but since He is our Creator we are meant to be the way He made us. To believe otherwise is perceived as a sign of demonic or satanic influence. I have had this kind of theology used against me, and it falls apart with just a little analysis. We could not be vulnerable to demonic or satanic influence upon our identities unless we had the capacity to redefine ourselves, and we would only have the capacity to redefine ourselves if we were meant to assert our own identities. God might determine where we start out in life, but I don’t think we would be able to live without free will; if it’s all God’s will, then there’s really no one here but God playing with meat puppets. If we are free to make our own choices, who we are is a reflection of those choices, even if we cannot act on them. The problem most of us face in life is not having the opportunities to make the choices we really want to. One of the ways you find out who you are is by understanding the path you choose to take, and why. In any case, the world we live in only makes sense if we have true free will; there is clearly nothing limiting the choices people have except the consequences of those we act on. By chance or design, we are free to do anything we take it upon ourselves to do, and it’s up to us to figure out what the right thing to do is and to do the right thing because it is what we choose to do. In the end, we become better people by choosing to be our best, without the need for threats or coercion.

For all I know, the point of my life was to come to this understanding, to live a lie long enough to want nothing more than to be true to myself and find a way to be true to others, to understand how vital it is to be true even if the truth is out of reach. Perhaps that is something that can only be understood when you need something you cannot have, when you aspire for something that cannot be obtained with words, or actions. The thing I have sought my entire life is the power to change myself, not because I want power for its own sake, but because I need that power to become the person I want to be, the best person I can be. I can be honest and say I am not happy to be the best I can be; it’s not enough to make the most out of what I’ve been given. I want to be the best I can dream of being, and I wish I could achieve that on my own, without compromise. I’m not sure if that is possible in this world. I believe in the possibility, but what I believe only affects what I can accept as possible. In all probability, I will die for that belief because I don’t want to live in a world where it will not come true. Until then, however, I will keep thinking about what it would take to change the world just enough to make myself truly part of it.

Slightly Left of Nowhere

I rarely have time to write or draw, and as my friend keeps reminding me, I’ve little hope making a living as an artist or writer. I have to agree, knowing that even brilliant writing and art takes a massive investment of time and effort up front. That seems to be a recurring theme in my life, however. I have never really had the things I needed to succeed in life. I have almost always had a reasonable substitute for the things I lack, which I am sure could have been used to achieve success, if success meant anything in the absence of a life worth living. The hard, cold facts of life undermine my identity and force me to live the life of a person that does not exist. I succeeded in earning enough to live and function as a man, but the process left me with no sense of myself as a person; nothing that I did felt real to me and nothing that I engaged in felt meaningful.

I tended to find purpose in living for other people, and that worked when I was close to the people I cared about. I did not do that well when I was removed by one degree, living on my own. Alone, I shift from positive distractions as a productive member of a household of family or friends to negative distractions, focusing on work, school, art, writing, reading, and latching on to anything I can do to entertain or amuse myself so I do not dwell on the problems I am not able to solve. I do not go about it in a healthy, productive way. It is more frantic and desperate than anything healthy should be. I get a lot done, but I am never satisfied by my accomplishments, because I know they are not contributing anything to my true well-being. I know I am distracting myself and that I am neglecting many of my real needs, but I keep doing it because I will fall apart if I stop.

Work and school take the bulk of my time and effort, and while one allows me to pay the rent and other costs of living and the other improves my future career prospects, I’m really just treading water as I drift out into the ocean. A degree is a bit of a plus on one’s resume, but it is no guarantee of a good job, and may not offset the negative impact of any transition attempt, and the financial aid debt will drain the financial resources I need to transition successfully. So, even doing all the right things, I am digging myself into a hole I might not be able to climb out of. I have tried to use my need for distraction and love of art and writing together in a positive way, to kindle a creative source of income, but my creative impulses are driven by a need for self expression and I end up putting too much of myself into them. I do not mind that, but I doubt there is a huge audience for transgender themed art or fiction. I have put a few things out on the Internet to test the waters, and while I have gotten some great responses, they have been pretty scarce. Not very confidence building!

I’m a pretty stubborn person, though. I feel pretty fragile because I seem to be bruised inside and out, and that makes everything painful — but it does not really stop me if I accept the pain and push forward. I have mostly been tripped up by indifference. Yeah, okay, I know I’m no one important, and I’m slightly left of nowhere, but it is humbling and humiliating to put myself out here about as naked as I can get, and not even get rude cat calls! Personal feelings aside, though, I realize that I am not catering to anyone’s tastes here. I am just being my self, commenting out loud on topics of random interest between fits of bitching and moaning. I use my blog and various journals as a relief valve, and pretty shamelessly at times. I try to share thoughts of greater interest, and I present only observations and insight — I do not try to present myself as an authority. I am happy if I simply inspire thought, and I would like to get enough feed back to know that I do on occasion. I do not think I would change how I express myself to win over an audience as a professional blogger.

On the other hand, if you have ever been slightly left of nowhere, you are my target audience. If you are a misfit or a dreamer and yet believe there’s a place for you in the world, and that our dreams are worth sharing, you’re my people.

The Damage is Done

I wonder what is going to happen next. I wonder if I can hold it together to get a job and move out on my own. I wonder if I can manage to hold on to that job and support myself. I wonder, because I am not really wanted where I am. The only support I can count on, the support of my family and friends, is conditional. It always has been. It has always been conditional on me finding a way to get steady on my own two feet. The irony of that always brings a smile of agony. I know what they want, and that they want it for me, for me to become independent. It is something I do want. The problem is that it leaves me alone inside a life that holds absolutely no meaning for me. This person that I pretend to be, because he means something to his friends and family, means nothing to me. He does not mean enough, to the people who employ him, to have any purpose. He can be replaced by anyone and cannot compete with the living.

He is useful to me; like a suit of armor, he has protected me from so much that is so much worse than I have suffered. He is a little dented and out of shape, the former because he has taken many blows for me, the latter because he cannot maintain himself and I do not know how to keep him from falling apart. I can barely carry his weight, and when I stumble, he falls and shatters. I keep picking up the pieces and putting them back together, but after so many falls, it has become a cascade, a walking disaster. The only way to keep him together is to pour more and more of myself into him. This is how I am dying. I cannot live this lie, but it’s the only life I have got. It is not a life. This tragic joke goes on only because my will to live is strong; stronger and more defiant with every rip and tear in my heart, for every blind piercing agony in my soul. I get knocked down and get up so fast, so often it is like the flicker between two frames in a film.

You cannot see it happen. You do not even know that the look in your eye hit me like a freight train. You do not realize that the small gestures you make without thinking, your unconscious responses to the man standing between me and you, strike me like fists. You cannot know, so I stand there and smile, screaming in agony inside my armor. When you ask me my name, the lie floats lightly off my tongue, the cost of uttering it slicing through me with the crack of a whip. I barely flinch. I dare not. My disguise will not hold up for an instant if I falter. If I raise the slightest suspicion, this interview is done; this door closes and the time and effort and expense of getting here is wasted, my resources diminished with less hope of replenishing them. But the first lie is followed by another, another fact that hides and obscures the truth. I am older now, and my long search for a way to fit in — misfit that I am — betrays me, raising doubts about my stability and reliability.

I already know you do not want him. He is stained with my blood, the undeniable evidence of my constant failure to be what people expect. You cannot see the brilliant light of my mind, the glorious beauty of my soul. You cannot see this angel walking proudly through hell, head high, perfect in her understanding of herself. I pity you as you gently turn me away. I came here to die for you, to add your labors to the burden I carry for a pittance of money I need only to pay the toll of my existence so that I am not a burden upon the people I love; people whose love for him blinds them to my very existence. They see my suffering through him, but they do not understand this tiny glimpse of me. They cannot fathom the true depths of my suffering. When I tried to show myself, they saw me as his defect. They do not realize that if I were not forced to be something I am not, I would be perfect. I realize that if I even speak of my desire to be myself, I will hurt them.

I struggle to survive because they love him. I struggle because no one else wants him. No one else needs him. He is not normal and they can sense it. My own weakness, my desperate attempts to express myself, have undermined his position. I have left proof of his flawed nature where it can be traced back to him. I compromised my own cover. I have rendered my armor useless. It is such a shame I cannot take it off. It is so sad that it is crushing me. The weight of this sorrow staggering. It makes me wonder. It keeps me up at night, my fingers dancing in the ache of words, the gentle sound of keystrokes the only tears I can shed. The tide of desperation gently eroding the sand on which I stand. I have to do this. I have no more choice in this than I have about searching for a job. I am alone and I am not wanted, but I must find someone who has some small thing for which they need someone — and someone like me will do.

If only I had time. If only you would stop taking more than I have to give. I am willing to do anything. I am utterly without shame. Just give back enough to me for me to be able to pay a world that has denied me everything and charges to let me stay. I can do so many things, but all of them take time. I know you expect me to prove myself, you keep telling me I have to earn my keep. Telling me that while you keep taking, taking everything you can take from me. That’s fine, if you want it so much take everything; I have nothing left but me. I don’t have anywhere to go. I cannot escape from what is happening to me. It kills me to go on living, but I do not know how to let go. I no longer want to keep moving. I need to stop and say no more. Oh, but who do I ask for mercy? I don’t know who you are. Even if you can hear me, why should you listen or care? It’s been ten years since I really stopped hiding and finally cried out for help. With only my soul left to bargain with, I need help with no strings attached.

So, what kind of hope am I made of? I know better than to hope for such help. I know that I’ll just be called lazy and probably even crazy. Even the people that love him have thrown that one at me. The truth is that I have tried everything, done everything asked of me. I am lost and alone and exhausted. There is nothing left of me but my dreams, broken and bleeding as me. I’ve tried to make something of them, but it was never the right time. More and more my thoughts return to them, because it feels like I am running out of time. I just want to sit down and write them, but the opportunity dried away. What once was my one hope of salvation is now just another broken dream. It does not matter if I have something worth giving. Not if it is not in my hand. If I do not have time to produce it, well, isn’t that just too bad? I do not belong here. I wonder why I try?

A True Identity is Nothing to Fear

The response I received to my last post, Conundrum, prompted me to check out the recent posts of the people who commented or posted blogs in the transgender category yesterday. As a result, I became aware of the outcry against the appointment of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, Dr. Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey, by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), to the work group responsible for revising the entry for Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the Manual for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders. The first blog I read on the subject, posted by Gender Outlaw, struck a very personal chord with me. In addition to being transgendered, I was put up for adoption when I was four and spent a year in foster care while the state attempted to contact my biological father so that he might claim his custody rights. It was during my time in foster care that I was terrorized out of identifying myself as a girl and learned to keep my true identity a secret. It took time to learn how to restrain my natural impulses and act like a boy, and the threat of abandonment and rejection was used to reinforce “correct” behavior. By the time I was adopted, this conditioning had scarred me for life, rendering me incapable of trusting anyone with my true thoughts and feelings. When my new family noticed my feminine traits and confronted me with questions about my behavior, or offered even a mild rebuke for “acting like a girl” I was consumed with that fear of rejection and lied to deflect any suspicions.

To this day, I can not remember where I gained the fear of being institutionalized and subjected to shock or aversion therapy. It could have been something someone said to me, or around me. I do not recall, but having suffered an accidental electrocution when I was five I knew what it would do to me, and that fear ensured that my distrust extended to medical professionals in particular. I tried to understand why no one accepted me. Between the ages of five and six I learned the physical facts, and by the time I was seven I knew what a sex change was and how society viewed transsexuals. It confirmed my belief that, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, the thoughts and feelings that made me who I am marked me as abnormal and insane. To protect myself, I could never allow my true thoughts and feelings come to light — no matter how painful it was. The promise of abuse, the threat of violence and possibly even death was certain. I did not want to live like this. I wanted to be a boy, to be sane and normal and wanted in the world.

I did everything I could to accept the reality, carefully controlling my thoughts and feelings, training myself to think and act like a boy, even though I was often clueless about how. I observed and studied boys intently, trying to understand why they did the things they did so that my own actions would seem appropriate. I learned how to be friends with boys and stopped being friends with girls. I became lonely and miserable, my confidence tattered and thin because I could never trust my own instincts. Nothing I did could alter or prevent my true thoughts and feelings from asserting themselves, however. The plain and simple fact that I was not a girl caused instant agony, whenever it crossed my mind. I could understand girls without trying; often better than they understood themselves because my intuition flowed into an analytical mind that questioned everything that others took for granted.

I knew I was supposed to be female, but I did not have the right body and no means of changing it, though I pursued every possibility in secret to the point of absolute frustration and disappointment. I have not given up. I never gave up on finding a way to get the body that goes with my soul, but I struggle and fail to obtain the resources needed. The pose that I maintain, even now that I have overcome my fears enough to assert myself, costs too much. It takes so much out of me. I pay a price for every thought, word, or gesture committed to disguise the emotional tempest that has built up inside of me.

I do not like to answer people when they ask me how I am doing or how I feel. I have to lie, because there is no way to tell the truth. There is no way to describe how I feel, but I would not ask my worst enemy, the most abominable thing in existence, to feel this; how could I ever ask a stranger? How could I put that on a loved one? One moment of this pain is too much to bear. Sadly, when it is there every moment, you learn to. It can not destroy you because it can not exist without you. It is you. It is me.

…

I followed the posts to a petition against the appointment of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, Dr. Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey. I started this post to include the comments I left along with my signature, not realizing that cracking open that door would let so much out. Now I can see that my comment expresses the conclusions I reached on the repression of identity.

The use of any method to impose a state or frame of mind upon an individual to subvert or subdue that individual’s free willed expression of identity is nothing less than assault with a deadly weapon. No external agent or agency should be permitted to impose a belief, theory or system of thought upon any individual against that individual’s will. Voluntary self examination or constructive therapy should be sufficient to ensure that an individual with ambiguous feelings or confusion is able to resolve any uncertainty that could have negative consequences if an individual were to act in haste.

No one has the right to tell a person who he or she is. A body might house the mind, but it is the mind that makes a body into a person. It is a person’s privilege and natural obligation to assume and assert his or her own identity in accordance with his or her best understanding of him or her self; no one else has sufficient access an individual’s psyche. Social pressure of this nature is threatening enough to the formation of identity and causes significant trauma by itself; as a medical practice it would be an abomination.

Conundrum

Today I find myself puzzling over the weird fact of my existence. The Internet created an opportunity to show a side of myself that I had long kept hidden. I am transgendered; in spite of being born and raised male the core of my identity is female. It is not a convenient or desirable situation, and it puts me in constant conflict between who I am and what I am. It would be simpler to let myself be defined by my body but the simple fact is that I am defined by my mind, or to be more accurate, my mind is what defines me. It is the nature of my thoughts and feelings that define me as a person, and it is by examining and understanding my thoughts and feelings that I find myself forced to admit I am a girl in spite of being a boy. It could mean that my brain structure and chemistry is feminine, or it could mean that the character of a soul is stronger than the imprint of a body. There is no way to know. What I do know is that being male, thinking, acting and being perceived as a man, does not make me one; it does not change who I am. It only means that few people are ever likely to see me for who I am.

That is the real curse, the real tragedy of being transgendered. Short of changing the way people perceive me, by changing my physical appearance, there is little chance I will ever be accepted for who I am. Actually, short of a miraculous and literal metamorphosis, there is no chance. What I am stands in the way. What I am distorts me no matter how I appear. I am not a woman. Looking like a woman, dressing like a woman, taking hormones and getting surgery to make my anatomy more like a woman’s, will not make me a woman. A change from transgendered to transsexual is a lateral move. I’ve been tempted, because it would allow me to be much closer to my natural self, but I’ve always known that the physical facts would still prevent people from seeing me for who I am.

But, who am I? That is the question it always comes back to. That is the question that stops me in my tracks every time I meet someone, or interview for a job. I am a lifetime full of facts that obscure the truth. I am a consciousness trapped in a reality that denies me my own reality. My body is nothing more than the earth in which my awareness is rooted. To conform to the flesh, I have to deny my own identity and assume the one that circumstance has provided. To survive, I have to conform to the flesh, and the pain it causes leaves me with no doubt as to the existence of the soul. The only thing in reality that can explain the cause and nature of this pain is the fact of my own reality, the fact that I, myself, am real. This pain, though it has repeatedly broken me and driven me to the brink of suicide, is one thing that assures me I am true.

I know who I am. In spite of having nothing to support me, nothing to confirm my identity, nothing in this world to base it upon but the understanding of what makes me true to myself, I know the truth. I have always known it, even when I tried to deny it for the sake of others who expected or demanded that I conform to their perceptions of me. I am different from most people only in knowing exactly the cost of the circumstances of my birth. In philosophy and religion, it is common to hear that we choose our place in reality, but if you examine it more carefully the choice is not one based on getting what we want out of life, it is based on getting what we need to perfect ourselves; it is a test, a trial by fire. I assumed that my test was about self-sacrifice and accepting reality. Acting on this belief, I nearly destroyed myself.

It is obvious when you think about it. It does not matter what you are if you lose sight of who you are. If you take the person out of the picture, it ceases to have a frame of reference, a perspective that gives it significance and meaning. All of my life I have listened to people asking “what is the point of all this?” and as soon as I realized that without us all of this has no point, I understood. We are the point of all of this. We give this focus. The problem has always been that we have never really understood our purpose. We do not understand what it means to be the point of existence. In today’s world, “existential” is practically a dirty word. No one wants to be existential. We have turned our backs on the spiritual, the ephemeral, the insubstantial, intangible and invisible, and in the process turned our backs on ourselves. This is the path to destruction.

All of the pain and suffering in the world is a product of us walking down this path. If we fail to see the point in our own existence, we cannot truly see the point in anyone’s existence. In a pointless existence, we are driven only by the impulses to avoid pain and seek pleasure and either way we are rendered too numb to think. Without thought we are blind and indifferent to the consequences of our actions, the pain and suffering we cause. Instead of thinking, we rationalize. Instead of solving problems that we have created, we justify them and in the process we create injustice. We end up pitting ourselves against each other, struggling for power to rise above the conflict, creating institutions that marginalize and alienate us further. Each step on this path of destruction strips away a layer of our souls and makes it easier for us to destroy each other.

As a misfit, I have always been painfully sensitive to the suffering of others, and the world’s suffering eclipses the imagination. The mere apprehension of it is overwhelming. Everyone is aware of it on some level and I am sure it is the weight of that apprehension that discourages so many, leaving them wondering if there is any point to existence, unable to understand how a meaningful universe could be so cruel and indifferent. I usually wonder why I am so desperate to find a place for myself in it. All I know is, this world is the one dream we all share and I am tired of dreaming alone.

The Impact of Social Stratification

We’re all human. None of us have a say in what circumstances we are born. Pretty much any other characteristic by which people can be defined produces some form of social stratification. Thinking about it boggles the mind. I’ve grown up with the ideas of caste and class, and tried to understand how anyone can willingly accept being “put in their place” by the people around them. In the end, I think it all comes down to the perception of power, the ways in which circumstances can be used to dominate society.

It is fair to say that society, like reality itself, is created and sustained by our participation. Society is an unspoken contract, and one that is sort of worked out on the fly and passed down in its present, imperfect form through each generation. We pride ourselves on the progress we have made, but honestly it seems that whatever progress we have made has been in spite of ourselves. But, how can we address it critically and sensibly?

It is so easy to point the finger of blame, or to rationalize human behavior, but I’m still asking myself, “Why does anyone put up with this?” There are certain things, things we have created, that make us desperately unequal. Consider the tendency of formal organizations to create authority, or formal systems to create wealth, or formal status or merit to create prestige.

These are useful things, but they need to be paired with responsibility, integrity, and humility. Look at the way that groups are formed on the basis of common identity or purpose, but create trends of positive and negative discrimination, and the guidelines for institutionalizing them as caste or class. Think of the many ways that individuals who have gained a privileged place in society have acted to protect their privilege by limiting opportunities, controlling resources, creating surplus labor forced to compete for reduced wages.

The fact is that any system or organization can be leveraged to create power, in one of many forms. Money is economic power. Prestige is social power. Authority is political power. This is power we all have, but depending on where we are in the system, that power is either channeled away from us, or right into our hands, and it happens because we allow it to happen. The problem is that social stratification dramatically shifts the balance and flow of power. The more concentrated the power structure becomes, the more severe the inequalities of society.

The ultimate danger is not revolution, however. The more extreme the imbalance is, the more coercive the power structure becomes, the more controlling it becomes. The real danger is not that people will fight the system. The real danger is that they will simply abandon it. They will try to escape their miserable lives through drugs and debauchery, they will turn to crime and simply take what they require, or they will quietly, desperately, take their own lives.

Paying the Price

As true as it is that some people are incapable of valuing things they have not paid the price for, the fact is that free money is never free. There is terrible cost for being on the public dole, that is immediately evident when you walk into a welfare community. Being on public assistance or living on a reservation, the cost of that free income or housing is having to live in poverty. It provides just enough to survive but not enough to advance. While many assistance programs include job training and placement programs, the jobs one can qualify for rarely provide better incomes.

Taken in the context of the way people on state or federal assistance are forced to jump through hoops just to get food, clothing, housing or basic medical services, it is hard to imagine a more discouraging or disheartening life style. People who are subjected to this tend to have little appreciation for the system that provides for them (the rest of society for the most part) because the system has no appreciation for them. Part of this comes from having someone else decide which of their needs deserve to be met, or what sort of help they deserve to get.

To simply exist in the world requires more time and resources than an individual can provide for themselves. It simply is not possible to advance if you can not start out on an even footing with the rest of the world, and people in poverty rarely do. The best most impoverished families can do is to work twice as hard as everyone else for half as much in the hope of giving their children the opportunities they never had. No one can choose what family, race, community, culture or nation to be born into, or the advantages and disadvantages that they have as an accident of birth.

It’s human nature to say that “no child shall be left behind” but in reality some children get born with one hell of a head start. Just knowing you got dealt a bad hand in life is enough to make you pretty unhappy, but when you also realize that the deck was stacked against you that unhappiness can become something much uglier. Poverty is the direct consequence of the creation and accumulation of wealth. Poverty is symptom of a disease that infects civilization, and until civilization can overcome this disease it will continue to be sick and just a bit deranged.

It is natural to assume that the disease is greed, but let’s be honest, its only human to want more than we need. The problem is that some people are ruthless enough to simply take whatever they want; a certain pair of continents come to mind as examples. I would also like to point out that, while there are semantic differences between “criminals” and “rebels” the defining characteristic of any society’s ne’er-do-wells is that they are usually people who, feeling that they are not properly represented or established in society, do not respect the establishments of society.

It is not necessary to be in poverty to be a criminal, or a terrorist, or what have you, but being in poverty puts you a lot closer to the fringe of society where you have more to gain by bucking the system than you do by participating in it. As long as there are people out there who have better prospects working against society, there will be people content to exploit or disrupt it. The parasitic element of our society is created by our own institutions, in the way they are organized, the way the operate, and the way they perpetuate imbalances in the status quo.

To see who is at fault, you simply look at who benefits from the status quo the most consistently. Crime and welfare have been accepted by those people as an acceptable operational reality of industry, economics and politics. The first question everyone needs to ask is, “who has the right to determine privilege?” Privilege is certainly not distributed based on who does the most work, or even who does the most important work. In both cases, the poor do. To understand how important the working poor are, try to imagine what would happen to civilization if they all stopped doing their jobs!

Granted, there are some very specialized fields that have great value, and the individuals who perform those functions are handsomely rewarded, but it does not always follow that a highly valued worker does the most important work. Any job can become “worthless” if enough people are skilled at doing it — that’s simple “supply and demand” and it applies to general labor or brain surgery. Teachers, who perform an essential social function, are valued proportionately to the perceived value or significance of the students they instruct.

Yes, other factors like tenure and experience apply, but a gifted grade-school teacher is easily overlooked in favor of a competent tenured professor at an elite university. Which brings up the second question everyone needs to ask, “who has the right to determine the value of my contribution to society?” The answer to both of the questions raised should be “Me.” Any other answer ought to show you what’s wrong with the system. Beyond the most basic necessities, “chasing the dollar” is a very unfulfilling way to spend life.

With so much emphasis on making money, particularly in business, it becomes too easy to lose sight of why we are working in the first place. Most people accept the argument that money is superior to barter, but both systems of exchange are dependent upon assigning a fair value to the production of goods and services. The value of the dollar fluctuates, and over the past hundred years has plummeted through inflation, but the cost of an hour’s work is still an hour spent working. The true value is in what is accomplished, and how hard it is to accomplish — and only the person doing the work knows that!

The day people stopped setting the value of their own work was the day that people lost their independence and freedom. When there is always someone else deciding the value of your work and your worth in the community, what assurance is there that the decision will be fair? Living is the only privilege we truly have, and we have the responsibility of making our own contribution to the world valuable. Anything that distorts or denies that is part of the problem. If you want more in life, you have to be more, you have to do more; you can’t just keep doing the same thing you have been doing all along.

You are going to have to do something you don’t want to do — because if you wanted to do it, you would have already tried. But, you can never know if you’ll like doing something until you try, and in some cases until you succeed. This is all common sense stuff, but it’s amazing how easy it is for people to avoid even thinking these simple thoughts when they need to, or taking it to heart. And really, all the good advice in the world is worthless if a person is not listening, and it can’t be used unless a person can take it upon themselves to use it.

Life really does not have a purpose if you don’t live your life on purpose. People really do a lot better in the world when they act like they have a good reason for being here. Blissful ignorance of the world is a handicap, however pleasant it might seem. An open mind should always be guarded by open eyes.

Take a Moment to Reflect

Even with the best intentions no one has the right to impose a system of thought or action on anyone against their will. Ironically, that is exactly what has happened to all of us as we were born into this world. It is in some ways no different than being born into slavery, in the sense that we come into the world having no say in the system that will govern our lives, and we spend our most vulnerable years being programmed to become obedient citizens and uphold the status quo.

As children we learn that the double-standard is pretty much the rule in virtually all situations, and while there seem to be thousands of problems in the world, the one thing all problems have in common is apathy and indifference. The older generation has already been through the school of hard knocks and become bitter, skeptical, intolerant, or what have you — the end result being that most people have given up on trying to make the world a better place and turned their attention to finding a better place in the world. While most people are busy pushing and shoving each other aside trying to “get their share” no one is taking responsibility for the world we share.

Now, I understand that self interest is important for people’s well-being, but our selfishness as a species has become blinding. It isn’t enough that we’re consuming the world’s renewable resources faster than the world can cope with, or that we’re depleting the world’s limited resources as fast as we can dig them up, but we also pile up mountains of debt for our children to conduct wars with nations we’ve given up trying to be friends with. People need to wake up and realize that no one is going to fix the world for them.

The people who have seized control of our world are abusing the authority they’ve been given, ignoring the responsibilities we’ve entrusted them with. I’m not just talking about our presidents and prime ministers, here; I am talking about the people who are given authority in all walks of life that are exploiting the system for their own benefit. I’m even talking about the customers who abuse the courtesy of employees to get special attention or service. Every single abuse of the public trust is passed on to another human being, and while people are complaining about how they are being mistreated, each person who uses their misfortune as an excuse to abuse the public trust is helping to destroy the world we live in.

Not all at once, not today, but almost every day, somewhere, for someone, it manifests as robbery, assault, rape, murder. That is how it works. The end of the world comes one person at a time. Every time a person dies, the world loses something irreplaceable.

There have always been those who believe that the world would be a better place without some people in it, and there have always been people willing to kill anyone who gets in their way. We have all been one of those people, at some point in our lives, for some part of our lives. The worst possible human being exists within all of us, as does the best. We can choose to understand this, and we can choose what sort of human being we will allow ourselves to be. We can choose to be weak, we can choose to be insignificant, or we can choose to be powerful and extraordinary.

Those choices are ours, and we make them by doing what those choices call for. But, no one is going to make the right choice if no one cares. The only thing that people need, really, is something that most people have — or can get access to — and the only thing they need to do is stop taking it for granted. It’s called a mirror. Take a good look, because that is who is going to change the world — or not — and that is who you have to fight to succeed.