elibasila

[elibasila]

8: revisit an old prompt ~ an operation carried out

something to do with the body again

Background - 

I usually have a hard time with trying to inject myself every Saturday, I mean it was a lot harder when I was first learning how to do it. Like when they first sent me home after self-injection training, I made a plan to ease myself into it, as I knew that I could physically do it (inject myself) but I knew I couldn’t do it alone. Which meant I would need another person in the room to subconsciously pressure me into finishing the job, which consequently came down to having whoever was at home to watch me take my shot at an ungodly hour of the morning or evening. But, after a while I (probably around a month) I first injected myself without having to have another person distracting/pressuring me (while I was in quarantine for the first couple weeks I had my roommate facetime me during my t shot) which was a huge step for me. After that I was surprisingly able inject myself on my own since then, and as I was doing it more and more it was also starting to hurt less (which is quite odd to gauge as to why it hurts/doesn’t hurt sometimes). So for this revisited practice I wanted to do a more plain and real example of an operation I carry out weekly (and will probably do so for the rest of my life). 

Also a trigger warning for anyone who wants to watch the video: the video includes real footage of real needles and footage of self injection

Practice - 

https://youtu.be/uGeyeg16NqA

[elibasila]

7: dismantling biological/natural

how these terms affect and apply to relationships between humans

Background -

Recently (and really ever since I came out) I’ve been hearing the word ‘biological’ a lot in regards to talking about people. Weirdly enough people will use it to describe themselves in comparison to other people in my case the example I see the most is this: I explain to someone that I’m trans, which I usually use the words ‘trans guy/man’, and tell them about my experiences as they’re relevant to the conversation at hand and in response some (cis) people respond with statements like, ‘well as a biological woman/man I xyz’.

Now this phenomenon isn’t new to me at all, ever since I’ve been aware of what transgender meant, and the reality of the fluidity in both sex and gender, I’ve heard the word ‘biological’ somewhere within the general discourse. In the past, it honestly hasn’t bothered me that much, I would usually brush it off and not think twice about how I was ingesting those words and what they meant, beyond the text that was in front of me. I could also say that in the past, even when I was aware of my trans identity, I wasn’t necessarily putting much thought into micro aggressions/use of language as I was pre-occupied with much more direct conflicts in life. But, now that I have plenty of time to self reflect, especially with reading Calvino and talking a lot more about my queerness/transness during quarantine I have plenty of time to unpack and dismantle these false notions of ‘biology and nature’.  

Practice - 

In this practice I want to try and dismantle preconceived notions of how we label humans, particularly within the trans/cis dichotomy of gender identity, and how that relates to ‘science’ and ‘nature’. 

let’s lay down some structure in order to dismantle:

biological (adjective):

relating to biology or living organisms

(of a member of a person’s family) related by blood, genetically related

biology (noun):

the study of living organisms, divided into many specialized fields that cover their morphology, physiology, anatomy, behavior, origin, and distribution.

nature (noun): 

the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.

the basic or inherent features of something, especially when seen as characteristic of it.

Now with these codified definitions in mind, we can take apart why people use these concepts/terms to describe things/themselves and gender as a concept. Firstly, we need to establish the fact that gender doesn’t equal sex, and it never has, the evidence being the existence of trans people since the beginning of humankind and the existence of intersex people/organisms since the beginning of living organisms.  

stream of consciousness/dismantling the biological stream - 

people keep getting the concepts of gender and sex confused, its 2020 bro

so if you’re biological than what am I?

is to call myself a biological man something other than arbitrary

is to call myself a biological trans man something other than arbitrary

what is a biological woman/man, as we know that gender isn’t sex and therefore gender is not biological or scientific in the least, it’s an identity and identities aren’t quantifiable by science, they inherently make no sense 

why do people call themselves biological women then? what is the point in calling yourself that, are some humans not a product that is biological are some humans not natural/unnatural? did you mean you were assigned female at birth, is that what you mean? cause that would logically make more sense than you calling yourself a biological woman/man

i think at this point in human history we should all know by now that sex and gender don’t correlate all the time, and those two things exist on separate spectrums. human existence is not as quantifiable as western science/mindsets like to believe, and it’s quite disheartening to hear them try

what does that make me then? what does that make a trans person then? what does that make an intersex person then?

what’s an anomaly and why do humans chose to prescribe this system to the whole diverse/unknown range of humans that exist, how is this helping people who don’t exist to you, did certain people not exist before a point in time, 

are cis/straight/people who aren’t intersex the original beings and we’re just the leftovers, dear god really, they’re Adam and we’re the creation of Eve who was born from his rib

its extremely unnecessary to call yourself a biological human, unless there are artificial humans running around (finally) and until that day comes you probably shouldn’t be calling yourself sahara desert/ desert desert

maybe cis people should start to investigate/question why they’re cis in the first place, a little self reflection wont hurt no one

god i wish we weren’t biological cuz maybe then things would be easier

why should i have to explain myself, you explain your damn self 

there’s also the similar saying among transphobes that call us unnatural which is quite laughable

it must be hard to be cis, cuz damn 

[elibasila]

6: redirecting yourself into an image

practicing through abstracted literalism 

Background - 

My relationship with images, particularly whenever I’m in them, is kinda of complicated but can mostly be described as regarded with a lot of hesitation. And that’s been since forever, at least ever since I started puberty (no shit) as I feel it’s quite obvious as to why I was so hesitant on the concept of photos/images (as I’m pretty sure that I wasn't the only one during puberty to be pretty self conscious and wary around things like pictures). It’s also no wonder now that I’m just as wary of photos than I was during my 1st puberty, as many of the same problems/complications come up. Some like, how will others perceive my body and in conjunction my identity as a man/person, what’s my relationship with the physical/intangible, relationships between body and space, my bodies and other bodies, etc. As well as all of these in mind there’s also the fact of navigating through the world of images as a trans person who’s gender/expression doesn’t always align. 

Practice - 

A lot of what I do revolves around ‘body’ and with these prompts in particular I tend to focus a lot on myself (go figure), so I wanted to be informed by the literalism and abstraction from the artists that we’ve been talking about lately in class. Many of them mention the relationship between body and literalism, and that (at least in my perspective) as a result there comes a sort of abstraction of the body and/or whatever the body was in relation to (movement, visual art, video, etc). So I took out my frustrations on some digital media/photographs through photoshop

[elibasila]

5: a search for the indefinite

astrology n stuff

Background - 

I wanted to look into astrology, specifically analyze/observe why there is such value held in that field of knowledge, especially within communities that I’m involved in. I wanted to see if astrology’s relationship with spirituality had a profound effect on certain people and why it has such an effect in the first place. In my own personal views I believe myself to be an agnostic person (with a very healthy dose of fear/curiosity in the supernatural and spiritual practices) who has a lot of history with the Protestant church, and christianity in general (of which I don’t believe anymore). However, relating to how I usually interact with astrology/most notably the zodiac I usually don’t take astrology as seriously as many others do, and don’t find significant purpose within, but am extremely willing and excited to learn about the diverse range of esoteric practices/beliefs. Even within the past couple years I’ve been at college and have progressed more in higher education I find myself seeking out and trying to understand fringe/esoteric practices/groups, so within this practice I’d like to further understand a popular concept within my own queer communities. So I wanted to analyze my own position/status within the structure of astrology (figure out my sun, moon and rising signs and see how I feel about them), while also investigating why this concept is such a popular one within the queer community.

Practice 1 - 

A while ago I downloaded CoStar which is an app that keeps track of your astrological cycles and signs (in a very detailed manner) and also gives daily or weekly horoscopes as well as letting you link up with your friends’ signs and cycles as well. I gave them the proper information to find my sign(s) which are: Taurus Sun, Aries Moon, and a Rising Leo. 

With that in mind I skimmed through the app’s information on my signs and the overall cycles, most of which the overall cycles I didn’t understand like the House systems. According to the app and to others who’ve shared their views on my signs, their perspective on my personality was as follows: 

I have romantic tendencies in relationships (lmao)

I’m a stable, home bodied person

I prioritize comfort above all else

I’m associated and connected most with the Earth/nature

The signs that are most compatible with my Sun sign is: Cancer, Virgo, Capricorn, Pisces, and the least compatible sign are: Leo and Aquarius

I’m the most practical, efficient and hard working person ever

I’m extremely stubborn and possessive and stuck in my ways/rigid

Now personally I think that my star signs or the perceptions associated with them weren’t really accurate to myself (in my own perspective) and to what I remember or identify with my daily behavior and thoughts. I can understand some of them like my need for comfort and stability, which strongly reminds me that I am the type of person who won’t go out of their way, or really try to be ambitious as I like being comfortable, even if it potential stagnancy. 

However, the ones that I disagree with most would have to be my star signs association with how people viewed me as a romantic partner. To be clear, I am asexual (as far as I know) and have been in one prior relationship before, which totals my romantic experience to one, so maybe I haven’t experienced enough to say that these assumptions aren’t true. But, I do know myself well enough (even if my hormone levels are in 2nd puberty right now) to know that I am definitely not (and never was) a ‘romantic’ person, and my love language is far from the conventional methods of professing love/affection. I’m a very quiet person, who hates a lot of physical affection/contact and quite regularly will avoid any physically intimate awkward situations as I’m also unsure of how to function in traditionally romantic relationships/scenerios. 

Another assumption that I believe to be inaccurate was my association with rigidness and being ‘stuck in my ways’, as I feel that I may function on a rigid routine but my way of thinking has been very fluid and loose over time. I’ve changed more in 2 years than in the past 18 years of my life as I’ve been put in a lot of different situations/places I wasn’t raised in/unfamiliar with, and I feel adaptability kind of weighs out my own rigidity/inflexibility. 

Practice 2 - 

Thinking about my past experiences in exclusively queer situations/spaces I’ve noticed a majority of the people I heard would reference astrology, their astrological signs and others’ astrological signs a lot (like a lot). And at first I thought it was more of an inside joke because I myself didn’t know what they talking about (as I didn’t know what all the signs were in first place) and then quickly realized that when I would interact with some people in a dating space (like Tinder, Bumble, just talking with potential romantic partners) they would ask about it (in a serious manner). I realized even quicker that a lot of people mainly want to know these sort of things so that they can judge the compatibility of a potential relationship (or an existing relationship). And there are some who go a little further and completely avoid others who have incompatible signs with their own (or signs they just don’t plain like) and/or  drop the person they were talking to when they’d learn their sign. 

So initially, this was very confusing to me and I didn’t really get it (honestly I still don’t really get it), as I didn’t understand the logic of astrology’s relationship with ‘relationships’ and what the consequences were. So I did what anyone else would do and I looked it up, and I’ll link below some of the articles that I found most interesting on this topic. 

https://www.them.us/story/queer-skeptics-who-reject-astrology

http://www.newnownext.com/queer-lgbtq-astrology-horoscope-stars/01/2019/

https://www.autostraddle.com/believe-it-or-not-only-28-of-queer-women-believe-in-astrology-but-50-check-their-horoscopes-anyway-434287/

https://mashable.com/2018/05/04/astrology-lgbtq-stars-resurgence-diverse-voices/

https://www.outfrontmagazine.com/trending/stuff-gay-people-like-astrology/

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evgg9a/the-rise-of-the-queer-astrology-movement

https://hellogiggles.com/lifestyle/importance-astrology-online-queer-communities/ 

After reading these articles it started to make more and more sense as to why queer/LGBT+ communities/people tend to gravitate more towards astrology. A lot of the queer community has been historically (and in the present day) rejected and pushed out of organized religious spaces, especially during their formative years. I would think that this would definitely have a profound effect on many people’s relationship with spirituality, coping and their search to make sense of the world they’re in. A lot of what I’ve heard and felt is the need to be able to make sense of things, to be able to find something that can give meaning/purpose or clarity especially when you’re part of a marginalized community who’s suffered a lot of trauma associated with religion/spirituality. There’s also the flip-side to that coin of the believers vs the non-believers who believe that it’s counter-productive or harmful to believe in these things like astrology. Within the first article they cite that it makes queer people an easy target to be taken advantage of, and that their money can be easily cheated by preying on people who are already disadvantaged. 

There’s also the real concern, and issue of white people (white queer/LGBT+ people) appropriating indigenous and non-Western spirituality practices/beliefs and how they can/are wildly misinterpreted. That a lot of non-native/white queer people use these practices/beliefs as “magical solutions to real problems”. The rampant misuse/misinterpretation of indigenous/non-white practices/beliefs can spread a lot of misinformation and potentially hurt queer communities of color that have been historically ostracized/discriminated against for their own cultures’ beliefs.

With these topics about spirituality and religious practices there are complex intersections especially when talking about the queer community and how those intersect with race, ethnicity and identity. I don’t think there’s a definitive answer as to why queer people gravitate towards it, but there are definitely real/valid observations being made that are happening in relation to non-Western esoteric practices/beliefs. With these intersections in mind thinking about my own relationship to spirituality, and the search for the indefinite. 

[elibasila]

4: communication between things that are different simply because they are different

analyzing sensationalism in new video platforms, 

Background - 

When I first heard this prompt I immediately knew what I was going to do, and what I was going to talk about. Now ever since I was 9 or 10 I was watching Youtube and primarily got most of my information through the internet. Youtube however was not really the place (at least ten years ago) where I got most/or any sort of factual information as (for me and many other people) it was mainly a platform for entertainment. However, as the years went on and as the internet evolved and information adapted to these new ways of existing, new methods were used in order to get people to watch more. This would take the form of click-baiting, which is really just drawing an audience in with the promise of something while delivering another. This practice is heavily tied to concepts like sensationalism, yellow journalism, scandal mongering, advertising, etc. Things that basically try to get attention by appealing to the masses’ preference towards easily digestible media/entertainment. 

More specifically this prompt got me thinking of a certain phenomenon that’s been happening recently (I’d say about past 6 years give or take) mostly on video platforms like Youtube. You could say that this content falls into the category of ‘social experiments’, as they clickbait the audience into a video about two things that are so radically different from one another into interacting (especially if there’s high stakes/tension). Some examples of very prominent Youtube channels are Jubilee, Cut, SoulPancake all who produce content mainly relating to these concepts of sensationalism on video platforms that seek to gain more viewers for the purpose of making profit, as it’s also good to know that these channels have high production value to them. The most popular channels, especially ones that dominate concepts like these, bring in a lot of numbers and regularly push out a lot of content in order to keep their revenue steady and going, and if an opportunity arises in the form of a controversial recent event they are one of the first platforms to hop on it, in hopes of staying relevant/profitable. 

My intention is not to label these channels/videos or this type of content as inherently ‘bad’ nor am I telling anyone not to watch certain things because I said so. I would just like to analyze this type of content as a person who’s identity/experience is used as a source for profit/controversy, basically analyzing it as a minority who’s identity/experience is used as a debate topic (sometimes not all the time). While also keeping in mind of identities that I’m not a part of/experiences that don’t affect me as they are also used for these tactics just as much, if not more. 

Practice through Research - 

Can Trump Supporters And Immigrants See Eye To Eye? Rich And Poor People Seek To Understand Each Other. Cops And Ex-Felons Seek To Find Common Ground. Pro-Choice And Pro-Life Supporters Search For Common Ground. Atheists and Christians Debate Truth And Belief. Should You Watch Porn? Can Sex Workers and Pastors Find Middle Ground? Can Black Lives Matter & Law Enforcement See Eye To Eye? Traditional vs Trans: Are There More Than 2 Genders? Men and Women Seek to Understand Each Other. Can Scientists and Religious Leaders See Eye to Eye? Can Voters and Non-Voters See Eye to Eye? Millionaires vs Minimum Wage: Did You Earn Your Money? Can Socialists and Capitalists Find Middle Ground? Should We Cancel Celebrities for Their Crimes? 

In order to show the patterns of how these channels (these examples are taken from Jubilee from their popular series Middle Ground) title their videos or really how they advertise them, as you can argue that the title of a video/piece of media is technically the advertisement for it as well. As you can see why I clearly thought of these types of videos when the prompt was brought up, as the premise of these videos are quite literately; communication between things that are different simply because they’re different. Although that’s the premise behind their concept, what actually happens within the video follows a pattern similar to this: The two opposing groups of people start out civil or mildly defensive, there are two sides and one is usually the privileged while the other is usually drastically underprivileged. It usually ends civil and with plastered on smiles/hugs and ‘thank you’s’ as these videos try to keep an air of well-mannered behavior on both sides. The two groups are given prompted questions and are able to decide if they want to speak on them, first with addressing their similar views and then introduce the others that disagree. Again most of these videos/discussions/debates remain pretty civil and level-headed as they do a great job of that, but a lot of the conversation is fraught with micro-aggression and jabs at the other side, similar to passive aggressiveness, which reads like a watered-down debate/discussion. These videos are usually around 10ish min, which to me is pretty short for the topics that they discuss/debate.

Notes On Watching -

I was thinking about was how much they probably cut out of those 10-20 min long videos, as most of those topics definitely deserve a lot more time to be properly discussed/analyzed (as I’ll go into later).   

In the same vein, when they talk about these very difficult and complex subjects they almost try to minimize the actual scale/affect these issues/relationships really have, which is in part I think due to the length of these videos, and the nature of their ‘brand’

These videos definitely aren’t for the people who’re the least privileged in these ‘discussion videos’, they feel like they’re for people who either don’t know anything about the situation or for the oppressor/privileged (when watching the videos that would discuss/use the identity/experience I am associated with)

This feels really forced, and very ingenuine at times, the people definitely dont want to be there

Sometimes definitely falls into the type of interaction that goes like: well I don’t agree with you/the way you live (read:I don’t agree with your existence) but I still love and respect you! - colorblindness - faith in humanity restored - wow I wish people (read: the oppressed) could be this civil ALL the time - tone deaf -

A sense of false progress, something labelled as progressive and active in the discussion when it’s really just the same things being said just packaged differently, and way more subtly   

Somewhat Conclusions - 

I feel that this type of media content isn’t as helpful/ insightful as it’s trying to be, and for the sake of being authentic their intentionally clickbaity advertisements make their attempts at genuine connection between people arbitrary. This especially comes into conflict when they talk about real people/minorities who have suffered through historic/contemporary discrimination and tends to water down these concepts in ways that only help the privileged/oppressors be able to ‘safely’ digest them. It airs on the side of the brand of corporate political/social justice that just . 

When watching these I try to remember what their intention is behind these videos as the only hint we get is their statement in their about section: “We believe in the power of empathy for human good”. Now this is a very noble statement, and a very idealized one at best, but these videos don’t invoke a sense of empathy in me, but rather a half-assed attempt at trying to show false progress between marginalized communities and oppressors to make the privileged feel better. And watching their videos that have to specifically deal with experiences/identities that I occupy doesn’t benefit me directly, it gives me the sense that nothing has changed except people are more polite now with their hate and/ ignorance, which is still as harmful as outright hatred/violence.

I propose that maybe this isn’t the best way to approach subjects like these, at least subjects that are extremely complex and ones that deserve careful, lengthy and well thought-out execution that I feel these types of shows lack. I can feel that these shows’ primary objectives aren’t to provide information/education to people, but that they’re mainly doing this for profit and banking on trendy/controversial/cancel culture (that’s not to say that maybe the creators/employees believe they’re doing this with pure intentions). I feel that if these types of discussions were to take place that the leading voices shouldn’t be from both sides of the issue, it should lead from the groups of people who’re historically/contemporarily under-privileged and marginalized, and mindfully include the opposing side’s views in carefully researched relation to the affected. I feel strongly that conversations about complex subjects should take place, but not necessarily in a place meant for monetization where these nuances are abused and minimized for profits’ sake.

[elibasila]

3: an operation carried out

Background - 

To carry out an operation, I tried to take literately as possible I just had to find my objective first and go from there. I decided I wanted the objective to be myself (cause I’m selfish) and possibly how I could alter myself in indirect ways that weren’t also necessarily my body or ‘me’. I started to think about reflections again from the 1st prompt, and the relationship between reflections, abstraction, absorption and transference. The symbolic meaning of mirrors, of mirror like objects and how they relate to the body. Can you operate one thing as another thing (meaning that the thing you’re using is not being used for it’s intended purpose), and how will the outcome be. 

Practice - 

Try to abstract my body through mirror like methods and items, record myself while doing it, to either further abstract and see what lies from the recording. 

Observations Made - 

in order to see more clearly you can turn your screen brightness to full

[elibasila]

2: everything can be transformed into something else

playing a lil dress up, characterizing through costumes or clothes

Background - 

When I was little, around the ages of toddler to 12 I was always into a good ole pretend fashion show with whoever was willing, which was usually my brothers, cousins, childhood friend and some other random kids who’d come over to our house. Any chance there was to play around with clothing in a silly and fun way was immediately taken advantage of, and I loved it. Honestly, I still love it and I wish I could partake in those times again. 

But, I feel if I did the same thing now it would be a lot more judgmental, especially if I did it with adults like myself (even young adults). Kids are usually a lot more experimental and less caring about how it actually looks, they’re a lot less judgmental (with most things) compared to adults/elders/teens. Kids don’t care about the overall composition/aesthetics, or if this goes with that, they just want to do whatever they feel like and have some fun. It feels like it would be too serious now, and people (including myself, which I’ll get to later) make the stakes really high when playing dress up nowadays. Everything in fashion/clothing has to perfect and it has to be clean, gorgeous and make sense, which is really annoying cause I feel that shouldn’t be the primary objective (or the only objective) with fashion at all. 

I’m talking specifically about playing dress up and fashion because I believe it’s important, both for adults and kids, to play with expression. Which to me was something I was discouraged to do as a kid, and even now as an adult. This aspect of how I was raised was really damaging to how I navigated myself before and now, as expression meant something deeper than it had to be. 

Expression was identity to a lot of people I was raised by, and that was subconsciously passed down to me, which has caused me a lot of grief in my life. Just to be clear, expression does not equal identity, they are two separate things (and they don’t even have to relate to one another) and I think people’s obsession with trying to find any correlation between those things hurts both trans and cis people and has consequently created a double standard. What I’ve noticed through my own experience is that trans people’s expression is a lot more scrutinized/enforced than cis people. Cis people have the inherent privilege to be able to express however they want, and still be taken seriously as a man/woman, or even be respected as gender non-conforming (most of the time, and there are exceptions/intersections). However, with trans people therein exists an odd double standard; once you transition/once you're out you should dedicate your effort to look like a man/woman. If you don’t do this you're now either faking your trans identity and/or you’re asking to get misgendered and you shouldn't get mad if people misgender cause you're not dressed like a man/woman. 

On the flip side there’s the issue of toxic masculinity and the hard boundaries of the binary both affecting trans and cis people. People within the binary I think are already pressured to adhere to it, and a good example I can think of is when cis-straight men police themselves and other cis-straight men into enforcing extremely strict, and most of the time arbitrary, ideals/standards. And the ‘consequence’ of not adhering to these rules is the person being perceived and labelled as gay/effeminate (which is inherently both homophobic and misogynistic) and treated as less than ‘a man’. 

With these relationships (between expression and identity, and how they’re used negatively) in mind while moving within this practice as a trans person who expresses ‘differently’ (or who wants to express differently) than how they identify. I want to also question if there is actually a way to express differently, what that would mean especially in relation to an identity (i.e. do they even have to relate at all, does your identity have any impact on how you express, why). How does queerness come into the equation of identity and expression, and how does that relate to trans people specifically? The correlation between sexual identities, gender identities and expression and how they interact with each other, if at all?

Practice - 

Create something resembling a human out of my own clothes, almost close to recreating myself but it’s not me I’m recreating. I want to create an entirely different person or character through clothes and my body. 

Observations Made/Notes - may include photos and/or videos

 I think my initial urge while I was choosing which clothes to put together was trying to figure out a type or arch type (like for example I couldn’t stop thinking of the Spice Girls: Baby Spice, Scary Spice, Posh Spice, etc), and even though it was helpful for me at the time to help me chose, I wish I was able to input my own free thought into this practice

When faced with the beginning I found it extremely hard to pick and chose as I was so indecisive that I needed to have a baseline for what I wanted to do, i think the above mentioned scenario helped me. 

I was overloaded with options so much so that it took me close to an hour of deciding of what to wear

not too far off from when I’m dressing myself in reality

yeah I definitely could’ve gone heavier on the experimentation

At first I was hoping to wear my binder underneath all this so I could flatten my chest (as thats one area where I feel strong dysphoria) but I just decided not to, and I don’t really know why

I think I didn’t because I was 1, tired 2, convinced myself that having boobs or even the appearance of boobs doesn’t make me a girl, and that I’m still a guy even when I have breasts 3, i think it was one of those apathetic days that I was having 

It did briefly however make me think of my upcoming top surgery again

What was the gender of the person I was creating, did they’re expression relate at all to their ‘personhood’: I decided that all these characters were genderless to me, but still all had extremely distinct expressions/mannerisms

Being a genderless being, being a person, how they would interact with other people and what world they resided in

how were those clothes making me act, did those clothes have an affect on my behavior while wearing them/thinking about them: yeah a little bit

[elibasila]

1: a refusal to look directly

Mirrors - i.e. the physical reflection of my body - how I was able to see my b o d y throughout time

Background/History -

Simply looking or observing myself in the mirror has been a huge evolution in my lifetime. I can remember when I was younger (around the start of middle school until my freshman/sophomore year of college) that I initially didn’t care for them, that is until my 1st puberty started. When at that age I began to recognize/see what my body was turning into, and how other people were going to see me/already saw me. My brain started to process my world’s ‘objective’ rules of gender and sex, and really that is when it probably started to hit me that I had to start taking my looks seriously like every other girl my age. For me, when I was younger I always believed I was a girl because that’s all I ever really knew, that was my ultimate reality and there was no language for girls who weren’t actually ‘girls’, your only option for a definition of yourself was a ‘tomboy’ or anything related to the stereotypical lesbian, which is mostly tied with ‘butchness’ where I grew up. With these concepts newly realized and lingering in the back of my head, I began to actually look at my reflections and compare myself to other girls. I noticed two things:

something was off, when I look at my chest and at my figure there’s a yearning to change/get rid of my body to look like something else. that something, however, was a thing that I’ve never actually seen before, therefore it did not exist. Not until later.

a heavy depressive feeling in my torso, almost feels like a dark 10lb weight in the bottom of my ribcage, it’s disappointment. I wasn’t expecting this to happen to me, even though I knew that girls went through puberty and usually got boobs, and certain figures out of it.

With these realizations during early 1st puberty I tried to do my best to mitigate these unknown feelings and repress them. I did that by looking at myself in the mirror and would practice apathy towards myself (towards my body, my look) on a daily basis. At first I would remember feeling extremely depressed/disappointed when I looked at myself in the mirror to counter this I would remember saying “this is as good as it’s gonna get”. I would say that, or something along the lines of “acceptance” (I don’t know if I’d call it acceptance in a good way though) and try to replace feelings of what was probably dysphoria with complete lack of feeling towards my body: apathy. 

This went on for years and I became very good at it, so much so that it was working to ignore my physical self, and for a long time I was able to avoid severe feelings of hatred towards my body through that method. However, with the complete lack of feeling towards my body came the consequence of extreme awkwardness towards my body/physical self, meaning I didn’t know how to feel about my body at all. Until the end of high school I was still coasting by with my apathetic body practice, as time went on I would try and hide it by making sure I was blending in with every other girl my age. Entering college I slowly started to lose my grip on my identity and what followed was the identity crisis which has lead me to question this practice of what I was ever doing before this. That was 1 year and some months ago, that was when I stopped looking at myself as a girl, I started to let it go finally and with that some of the apathy was shed as well. I was actually starting to have feelings/like real feelings about what I looked like/my body and one of the first ones was surprise. I was surprised at how much I was okay with myself, because to me I looked like a boy I looked somewhat androgynous to myself and I was actually happy about that. I was happy to look like not a girl and my feelings were quickly shifting from disappointment because I didn’t look like a ‘girl’ to happiness because I now knew I wasn’t a girl in the first place. 

All of a sudden I was entering into the honeymoon phase of my transition/realization and I felt great just to know I wasn’t a girl and to see myself in the mirror out of 18 years of misuse. I was happy with whatever I got because I was fresh then, now a year and some months later even those feelings of euphoria have now shifted into my previous method of apathetic body practice. The initial realization was great, after a while though the dysphoria grew as my transition started to build speed, and I was dealing with the issue of my physical body/appearance again. It shifted from me being happy I didn’t look like a girl in my eyes to me not looking enough like a boy in others eyes, my public existence was taking hold again during 2nd puberty. Not only were other people’s views influencing how I viewed my body but I believe that I would naturally devolve into this progression during my transition, I was even told in therapy that things were going to get harder, and that my dysphoria was probably going to get worse because I was now out and self aware of who I was, which was the trade off. The trade was me finally being able to figure out who I was after years of repression but with the realization there would be different issues to deal with now. 

Practice - 

And so we arrive at this point in time of the mirror I look into now, both remembering how I used it before to how I use it now. With the prompt I decided I wanted to acknowledge my history of my own body/mirror practice I’ve used during 1st puberty.

The basis was the practice of looking at my body in the mirror, which I do daily (brushing my teeth, facial care, etc) but dedicate a specific time in the mirror to do nothing but observe, on a daily basis.

Observations Made/Notes - 

 Not surprisingly it was extremely difficult for me to feel anything profound, because of this I thought that my long-standing habit of apathy towards my body had come back, just with a slightly different purpose; so as not to increase my dysphoria. I felt like I didn’t care overall

I would imagine myself without boobs, which surprisingly is something I used to do during 1st puberty, even before I knew what the language was I do clearly remember myself always daydreaming about losing my breasts. It was top surgery that I thought about, then and now, only now I’m much closer to actually doing what I’ve dreamed of.

The type of chest I saw myself having wasn’t linked to what a post-op chest would look like realistically, I saw myself with a scarless chest like I was born with a cis-man’s chest

I was comparing myself to other men I would see, though not as severely as I once did during 1st puberty, I’m realistically aware of what I look like,

I find some points of my body and smiled, like my arms (even if they’re undefined and thin), my face, my lips, 

also there were some points in which I could change/ or I didn’t like: my cheeks, my jawline, just my overall thin body frame that many people label as feminine, my chest (obviously), and more specifically my pelvis/hips area i think that might be my 2nd worst feeling part of my body

I definitely dont have bottom dysphoria which is kind of comforting to know

there are some moments in time, angles where I trick my brain into euphoria and those are the best times, cause I feel the most beautiful then

I think i want to look more beautfiul than I do handsome, I still have connections to my femininity and I dont want to feel ashamed cause I’m not