The Land of Chains and Glyphs

KEVIN: Boooo!

ABBY: Kevin –

KEVIN: What about Antarctica?

ABBY: What about it?

KEVIN: Um … Antarctica. The largest and southernmost principality on planet Earth… Average annual temperature of negative seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit, Abby.

ABBY: Um, well, that’s great information, Kevin, but there are no communists in Antarctica.

KEVIN: Oh, really, how do you know?

ABBY: There are like twelve people there.

KEVIN: But they could be communists.

ABBY: No, they couldn’t!

KEVIN: Yeah, oh, did you talk to them? Did you call them today?

ABBY: Yes, I called all of them today and they said they’re not communists.

KEVIN: Oh, really, well, that’s expensive, then, to call them. Do you have a phone card?

ABBY: You’re so not funny –

KEVIN: There are Russian scientists in Antarctica, Abby.

ABBY: Russia isn’t communist any more, Kevin!

KEVIN: Yeah, have you met a Russian?

ABBY: No.

KEVIN: Have you ever met one?

ABBY: No!

KEVIN: Well, then you don’t know!

ABBY: Mr Richards, how am I expected to debate like this?!

KEVIN: Yeah, Mr Richards, you shouldn’t allow this -

MR RICHARDS: Settle down. Settle down.

ABBY: He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!

KEVIN: Nice mole.

ABBY: For the hundredth time, it’s a beauty mark.

KEVIN: Maybe your mole’s communist. Nice mole, comrade.

ABBY: It’s a beauty mark!

KEVIN: Hey, your mole is shaped like Antarctica.

ABBY: Could you take a step back, because that breath is about to knock me over.

KEVIN: Yeah, it’s also the size of Antarctica.

ABBY: It’s ‘Antarctica’. And no, it’s not.

KEVIN: Hey, let’s make your mole a continent, call it ‘Abbyland’. And let that be my closing argument. “When you create a world where people are exactly the same, it gets dull, after you realise that they are you only not. And though some people might prefer communism and Russia to America and Antarctica, I wouldn’t. Thank you.

MR RICHARDS: Uh, well said, Kevin. A+

ABBY: What?!!

KEVIN: Seriously?

From I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out. by Jennifer Coates

I hate that the only effective response I can give to “boys are shit” is “well I’m not a boy.” I feel like I am selling out the boy in baseball pajamas that sat with me on the bed while I tried to figure out which one I was supposed to be, and the boys who I have met and loved from inside my boy suit—who believed they were talking to a boy. I feel like I am burning the history of the naked body that sits on the floor of my shower. The body that went to prom in a boxy tuxedo and coveted the dresses.

Because I am not a boy, but I had a boyhood. I was, and am, made to live as a boy and I cannot suspend the perspective that gave me and join in when it’s time to fluster one of those clueless fuckers into anger by calling him a fuckboi and then tell him his anger proves he’s a fuckboi, or to humiliate one with an OKCupid screenshot because we’ve willfully conflated the clumsy ones with the threatening ones so we can grab those solidarity faves. It’s fucked up. It has metastasized.

More than a few out transwomen have told me, privately, they they are uncomfortable with these things, but are afraid that speaking up about it would cause ciswomen to like and trust them less. “I play along,” one of them told me, “because in the queer community the only people who defend cisboys are cisboys. I don’t want to give up finally being read as a girl.”

Another says “I do the misandry stuff because it’s an easy way to earn queer cred points, but when I think about it it makes me uncomfortable.”

Another: “It’s a coping habit I’m not proud of. If I agree ‘girls rule boys drool’ it makes me feel more like a girl.”

Have you noticed, when a product is marketed in an unnecessarily gendered way, that the blame shifts depending on the gender? That a pink pen made “for women” is (and this is, of course, true) the work of idiotic cynical marketing people trying insultingly to pander to what they imagine women want? But when they make yogurt “for men” it is suddenly about how hilarious and fragile masculinity is — how men can’t eat yogurt unless their poor widdle bwains can be sure it doesn’t make them gay? #MasculinitySoFragile is aimed, with smug malice, at men—not marketers.

This conclusion—widely shared—is a product of insulated discourse. What I am NOT saying is: “open the floodgates, let in the shitty male trolls!” I know the trolls—they have tried to be my friends, they have tried to sneak into feminist spaces with no desire to learn or listen. I understand not trusting men who loudly and constantly hold forth on women’s issues and refuse to accept when they are mistaken. I’m not encouraging anyone to trust blindly. I am pleading to the discoursers: consider that this insulation has effects and try to mitigate them, if your priority really is finding truth amid a muck of concealed patriarchal lies. Check to see if maybe you are saying things and reproducing things mostly because it sounds good and feels good and nobody is challenging them.

These are not discursive problems that only apply to an “undercover” transwoman, these are discursive problems that are seemingly only visible to an “undercover” transwoman forced to carry multiple perspectives like bactrian humps.

‘I don’t understand this’ They’ll explain it if you wait.

‘I don’t like how this episode left things hanging’ There’s a continuation next week.

‘This character is flat’ Wait for them to be fleshed out.

Rich people shit is when I had to yell at my classmates that we are not spending tens of thousands of dollars ON BALLOONS for our prom when we had a DJ to pay and their response to me was "thats only 700 dollars per person."

Rich people shit is when I went to go tutor one of my classmates little brothers who was struggling with history and it took him 10 minutes to go get his tablet from his bedroom and come back to the kitchen table because their house was that big, which was being cleaned by a live-in maid while their private chef made us snacks the entire time I was tutoring him. And then their parents paid me 500 bucks and told me "sorry I seem to have misplaced my other wallet, is this enough? Its not a lot :(("

Rich people shit is when the other teachers kids and I breezed through school with high GPAs because all of our peers had so much money that they never had to care about getting into a good university or having careers or budgeting or anything, so they never tried.

Rich people shit is when youre invited to a little get together on the weekends and get told to bring an overnight bag because their definition of a little get together is an overnight yacht trip. And then you get there and find out that your middle class definition of what's needed for an overnight trip is VERY different from a rich persons definition of the same thing: you have some pajamas, clean underwear, toothpaste, and some soap and face wash, maybe some moisturizer. They bring half their wardrobes and designer personally-commissioned serums that cost more than your house and then tell you that youre "just so quaint."