Trade Mistakes

“And there may come a day when you forget the faces and voices of those you have met along the way. On that day, I bid you remember this… That no matter how far your journey may take you, you stand where you stand by virtue of the road you walked to get there.”

reblog this post if your account is a trans safe space or owned by a trans person!

I graduated high school in 99.

There was a student at our school named Wayne.

Wayne was gay. It was obvious. He was unable to stay in the closet even if he wanted to. To make matters worse, he was also Black. From a bullying standpoint, that was not a great combo. Both Black and white students made fun of him relentlessly. He was ostracized from the only community that may have given him protection. Only us theater kids stuck up for him, but not to significant effect.

Wayne was bullied so much that at one point he finally snapped and attacked his bullies with a lunch tray. I was actually seated in perfect line of sight and just sat there chewing my soggy fries in stunned silence. It didn't even seem real as I was witnessing it. The image of him wailing on his main bully as the food on his tray flew off is permanently logged into my long term memory.

The bully he attacked had blood all over his face and went straight to the nurse. Other than superficial cuts, he was not injured.

Before the attack, Wayne went to teachers for help. He went to guidance counselors for help. He went to the principals for help.

He did all of the things you were supposed to do. No one helped him. They wagged a finger at the bullies and warned them to stop.

Wayne's lunch tray melee was the only thing that worked. His bullies stayed far away from him. But a week later Wayne was expelled and the bullies were given no punishment.

So... no.

No one in my school talked about being trans.

It was a joke in my family that my youngest sibling hated dresses, which of course were mandatory for "girls." Ha ha, it's funny, ha ha. Because of course we just have to put up with wearing dresses.

That's my brother. Jake. He graduated from HS in 2001.

Aside from similar experiencing similar levels of violence and ostracisation to those described by previous posters, would my mental health been better had I known I was bisexual and genderqueer at 15 (rather than 28 and 39 respectively) instead of being keenly aware that I was Doing Woman Wrong despite trying Really Hard to be normal and not sure how I was still failing? Almost certainly.

Do I remember Eddie Izzard describing herself in the mid 90s as "a lesbian with a man's body" and feeling a strong sense of kinship, albeit the other way around, and then immediately dismissing it because female "transvestites" didn't exist, so I guess I couldn't feel like that? Painfully.

I spent middle school clutching my identity in secret because if it came out I was more then a emo girl with funky colored hair we'd be fucking dead. Litterly.

We went to a good school, in a big-ish city. Our current school is considred one of the queerest, and yet we can still point out each and every closeted person we only know to be trans because they've confided in us.

Said person was several grades ahead of me, and graduated long before I did, but I remained very close with the sister.

And what many people don’t realize is that this subculture was born as a way for young girls to express themselves in their own way. And it was also used as something against the adult life and the traditional culture, often seen as dull and boring and oppressive. By embracing cuteness, these young girls (and adult women, after a while) were showing non-conformation with the current standards.

NO OK THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!

This is also how the kawaii fashions started! Girls began dressing in cute and off beat styles for themsleves, they were criticized by adult figures telling them “you’ll never find a husband if you dress that way!” to which they began to reply “Good!”

All the Japanese subcultures and fashions that evolved out of this became a rebellion to tradition and the starch gender roles and expectations the adults were forcing on the younger generations. As early as the 70s and still to this day you’ll see an emphasis on child-like fashion and themes in more kawaii styles and the dismissal of the male gaze with styles like lolita (a lot of western people assume lolita is somehow sexual due to the name of the fashion, but ask any Japanese lolita and they will tell you that men hate the style and find it unattractive which is sometimes a large reason they gravitate towards the style - they can express their femininity and individuality while remaining independent and without the pressure to appeal to men)

What I was hoping this post might touch on is how people cling to book reading as a hobby that will make them automatically smarter or more superior than those who aren’t, no matter how little mental engagement they actually put into reading. There are people who shit on novels like Things Fall Apart, The Jungle, and Invisible Man for not being “entertaining enough.” There are people who base their entire personality on being an avid reader who chose to never think critically or challenge themselves. There are people who think reading makes you more empathetic by default, when in reality anyone, even terrible people, can project themselves onto the hero if they can’t think critically about their own life and choices.

If you think “real literature” doesn’t “work” that way, you’re not thinking substantially about literature, neither in individual instances nor in the broader scheme.

What do you think a tragic hero is? What do you think a quest narrative is? How do you think we can conceive of Seven Basic Plots? What do you think Comedy and Tragedy are? Do you think the Aeneid popped out of nowhere without referencing any of the patterns of Greek epics that made it compelling to its audience? Do you think Shakespeare was popular because his plays were “original” ideas with storylines that would have been surprising to his audience? Do you think fairy tales sprung out of the air as discrete individual units? Do you think no one has ever written anything that follows the patterns of Greek epics, Shakespeare, or fairy tales intentionally? Do you think “literature” contains no works that intentionally evoke an existing pattern in their plots and characters?

“Genre” as bookshops use it is not somehow superior to “tropes.” Fantasy, Westerns, Paranormal Romances, those categories are like, less than one or two centuries old and also damn near useless for anything except marketing. Genre is a hot fucking mess and pretty artificial. Tropes on the other hand? Those have always existed. They are, quite literally, inherent and natural parts of stories.

What “genre” is the Epic of Gilgamesh? What “genre” is the Odyssey? Fantasy? Do you think it is in any way appropriate to “genre” these stories using categories that would have been nonsense to their ancient audiences? What the fuck is fantasy?

Over and over again, we have told stories about heroes destroyed by their hubris, about mortals struggling against the inevitability of death, about the antics of trickster deities, about clever young boys outwitting giants and other malicious characters, about young girls swept into royalty, about brothers in conflict with one another, and the ability to identify these patterns and explore why they have persisted is…basically what literary and folklore studies is.

Just because you consider fanfic or romance to be “lesser” doesn’t mean they can’t be analyzed, or that the mechanical components of those things don’t exist in Real Literature. 10th grade English class clearly didn’t do any good for the people that did pay attention, if people are growing up thinking tropes were invented on fanfiction websites.

AAAAAHHHGHHHHH!!! AAUUUGHH FUCK! SON OF A FREAKING MOTHER!!

[grabs chip] 

hoooh… okay. I’m okay. :)

[pulls my hand back out]

SHIT FUCKING HELL! AAAAHHHH AAAAAOOOOHH WHY-

[chip crunching]