#bc the universe is Fundamentally against him. they gave him a bad life and when he fixed it into a good life they took it from him

[chipjrwibignaturals]

I will say— i haven’t gotten to it yet, because im bad at this, but— i want to state my surface level thoughts when it comes to chip Dying

bc like to me chip has always been a cockroach. no matter what he goes through, it won’t kill him. in some ways as a cruel cosmic joke, a cyclic tragedy, he’s destined to forever exist. he’s been given an impossible task, to find arlin, and he’s not allowed to stop. he’ll just keep going and wallowing in it aimlessly forever, he’s not allowed even the decency of death. in the same way he breaths air, chip jrwi keeps on living — it’s just what he does, how he is.

and it felt extra validated with when he considered quitting while Gill was gone. he felt like his own presence was bringing down the people around him, that it was his fault gillion was gone— so he was going to leave to save them from himself and just… sail. he knows leaving means giving up his only real tangible lead to find arlin, what he wants, but he also can’t risk them so he’ll just take a boat and… wander listlessly. Hope for maybe something good to stumble upon. god has cursed him and his work is never finished, etc etc.

so when i first heard abt Chip’s situation i was admittedly… not super into it? definitely contributed to why i got so far behind tbh, i wasn’t looking forward to it. it crashed hard against my perception of chip’s character & his narrative. hes destined to be a tragedy and that tragedy is because he’s alive

and I’ll be the first to say depending on handling i still may dislike the choice BUT I’ve made my own way around to enjoying the choice (even if it wouldn’t be my first choice)

first off, in some ways i feel like chip was also of the belief that he would just… keep living. no matter what happened to him. he’d “have a plan” and find some way to slip out, then restart and try again. he knows the universe seems to love to watch him suffer, so he just…. doesnt really think he can die. at least not like that.

it’s the very violation of the expectations I established, experienced in and out of character. it feels abrupt, wrong. that’s not what was set up for him! …until you realize that he changed first.

since the black rose, chip was seated with the fate of forever searching and trying to capture a past he can’t have. but it’s only through his experiences with jay and gillion and his OWN crew that he… grows past that. he makes peace with what he’s lost, or at least starts to, and allows for new growth in that spot. he’s regained a family to rely on, he’s growing comfortable and moving on. he’s losing the tragedy-angle of his own life— so he dies. his fate is absolute and it is black, it is a tragedy no matter what. this is the narrative retaliating against him for trying for better than he was allotted.

it’s worse too because he’s so close to finding arlin, to being able to finally put all this behind him and get closure. it’s all salt in the wound. leading him on, letting him regain his hope, giving him peace… only to snatch it all away. what a cruel, cruel joke.

[shkspr]

hi. on your post where you may or may not have ended on 'moffat is either your angel or your devil' did you have maybe an elaboration on that somewhere that i could possibly hear about. i'm very much a capaldi era stan and i've never tried to defend the matt smith era even though it had delightful moments sometimes so i wonder where that puts me. i'd love to hear your perspective on moffat as a person with your political perspective. -nicole

hi ok sorry i took so long to respond to this but i dont think you know how LOADED this question is for me but i am so happy to elaborate on that for you. first a few grains of salt to flavor your understanding of the whole situation: a. im unfairly biased against moffat bc im a davies stan and a tennant stan; b. i still very much enjoy and appreciate moffat era who for many reasons; and c. i hate moffat on a personal level far more than i could ever hate his work.

the thing is that its all always gonna be a bit mixed up bc i have to say a bunch of seemingly contradictory things in a row. for instance, a few moffat episodes are some of my absolute favorites of the rtd era, AND the show went way downhill when moffat took over, AND the really good episodes he wrote during the rtd era contained the seeds of his destruction.

like i made that post about the empty child/the doctor dances and it holds true for blink and thats about it bc the girl in the fireplace and silence in the library/forest of the dead are good but not nearly on the same level, and despite the fact that i like them at least nominally, they are also great examples of everything i hate about moffat and how he approached dw as a whole.

basically. doctor who is about people. there are many things about moffats tenure as showrunner that i think are a step up from rtd era who! actual gay people, for one! but i think that can likely be attributed mostly to an evolving Society as opposed to something inherent to him and his work, seeing as rtd is literally gay, and the existence of queer characters in moffats work doesnt mean the existence of good queer characters (ill give him bill but thats it!)

i have a few Primary Grievances with moffat and how he ran dw. all of them are things that got better with capaldi, but didnt go away. they are as follows:

moffat projects his own god complex onto the doctor

rtd era who had a doctor with a god complex. you cant ever be the doctor and not have a god complex. the problem with moffats era specifically is that the god complex was constant and unrepentant and was seen as a fundamental personality trait of the doctor rather than a demon he has to fight. he has the Momence where you feel bad for him, the Momence where he shows his humility or whatever and youre reminded that he doesnt want to be the lonely god, but those are just. moments. in a story where the doctor thinks hes the main character. rtd era doctor was aware that he wasnt the main character. he had to be an authority sometimes and he had to be the loner and he had to be sad about it, but he ultimately understood that he was expendable in a narrative sense.

this is how you get lines like “were the thin fat gay married anglican marines, why would we need names as well?” from the same show that gave you the gut punch moment at the end of midnight when they realize that nobody asked the hostess for her name. and on the one hand, thats a small sticking point, but on the other hand, its just one small example of the simple disregard that moffat has for humanity.

incidentally, this is a huge part of why sherlock sucked so bad: moffats main characters are special bc theyre so much bigger and better than all the normal people, and thats his downfall as a showrunner. he thinks that his audience wants fucking sheldon cooper when what they want is people.

like, ok. think of how many fantastic rtd era eps are based in the scenario “what if the doctor wasnt there? what if he was just out of commission for a bit?” and how those eps are the heart of the show!! bc theyre about people being people!! the thing is that all of the rtd era companions would have died for the doctor but he understood and the story understood that it wasnt about him.

this is like. nine sending rose home to save her life and sacrifice his own vs clara literally metaphysically entwining her existence w the doctor. ten also sending rose with her family to save her life vs river being raised from infancy to be obsessed w the doctor and then falling in love w him. martha leaving bc she values herself enough to make that decision vs amy being treated like a piece of meat.

and this is simultaneously a great callback to when i said that moffats episodes during the rtd era sometimes had the same problems as his show running (bc girl in the fireplace reeks of this), and a great segue into the next grievance.

moffat hates women

he hates women so fucking much. g-d, does steven moffat ever hate women. holy shit, he hates women. especially normal human women who prioritize their normal human lives on an equal or higher level than the doctor. moffat hated rose bc she wasnt special by his standards. the empty child/the doctor dances is the nicest he ever treated her, and she really didnt do much in those eps beyond a fuck ton of flirting.

girl in the fireplace is another shining example of this. youve got rose (who once again has another man to keep her busy, bc moffat doesnt think shes good enough for the doctor) sidelined for no reason only to be saved by the doctor at the last second or whatever. and then youve got reinette, who is pretty and powerful and special!

its just. moffat thinks that the doctor is as shallow and selfish as he is. thats why he thinks the doctor would stay in one place with reinette and not with rose. bc moffat is shallow and sees himself in the doctor and doesnt think he should have to settle for someone boring and normal.

not to mention rose met the doctor as an adult and chose to stay with him whereas reinette is. hm. introduced to the doctor as a child and grows up obsessed with him.

does that sound familiar? it should! bc it is also true of amy and river. and all of them are treated as viable romantic pairings. bc the only women who deserve the doctor are the ones whose entire existence revolves around him. which includes clara as well.

genuinely i think that at least on some level, not even necessarily consciously, that bill was a lesbian in part bc capaldi was too old to appeal to mainstream shippers. like twelve/clara is still a thing but not as universally appealing as eleven/clara but i am just spitballing. but i think they weighed the pros and cons of appealing to the woke crowd over the het shippers and found that gay companion was more profitable. anyway the point is to segue into the next point, which is that moffat hates permanent consequences.

moffat hates permanent consequences

steven moffat does not know how to kill a character. honestly it feels like hes doing it on purpose after a certain point, like he knows he has this habit and hes trying to riff on it to meme his own shit, but it doesnt work. it isnt funny and it isnt harmless, its bad writing.

the end of the doctor dances is so poignant and so meaningful and so fucking good bc its just this once! everybody lives, just this once! and then he does p much the same thing in forest of the dead - this one i could forgive, bc i do think that preserving those peoples consciousnesses did something for the doctor as a character, it wasnt completely meaningless. but everything after that kinda was.

rory died so many times its like. get a hobby lol. amy died at least once iirc but it was all a dream or something. clara died and was erased from the doctors memory. river was in prison and also died. bill? died. all of them sugarcoated or undone or ignored by the narrative to the point of having effectively no impact on the story. the point of a major character death is that its supposed to have a point. and you could argue that a piece of art could be making a point with a pointless death, ie. to put perspective on it and remind you that bad shit just happens, but with moffat the underlying message is always “i can do whatever i want, nothing is permanent or has lasting impact ever.”

basically, with moffat, tragedy exists to be undone. and this was a really brilliant, really wonderful thing in the doctor dances specifically bc it was the doctor clearly having seen his fair share of tragedy that couldnt be helped, now looking on his One Win with pride and delight bc he doesnt get wins like this! and then moffat proceeded to give him the same win over and over and over and over. nobody is ever dead. nobody is ever unable to be saved. and if they are, really truly dead and/or gone, then thats okay bc moffat has decided that [insert mitigating factor here]*

*the mitigating factor is usually some sort of computerized database of souls.

i can hear the moffat stans falling over themselves to remind me that amy and rory definitely died, and they did - after a long and happy life together, they died of old age. i dont consider that a character death any more than any other character choosing to permanently leave the tardis.

and its not just character deaths either, its like, everything. the destruction of gallifrey? never mind lol! character development? scrapped! the same episode four times? lets give it a fifth try and hope nobody notices. bc he doesnt know how to not make the doctor either an omnipotent savior or a self-pitying failure.

it is in nature of doctor who, i believe, for the doctor to win most of the time. like, it wouldnt be a very good show if he didnt win most of the time. but it also wouldnt be a very good show if he won all of the time. my point is that moffats doctor wins too often, and when he doesnt win, it feels empty and hollow rather than genuinely humbling, and you know hes not gonna grow from it pretty much at all.

so like. again, i like all of doctor who i enjoy all of it very much. i just think that steven moffat is a bad show runner and a decent writer at times. and it is frustrating. and im not here to convince or convert anyone im just living my truth. thank you for listening.

[agathonjack]

How Truth was Lost to History

Ancient Greece emerged from their Dark Age with the introduction of a new writing system and a new technology for transmitting ideas. This revolution in idea transmittal gave new power to the masses in a way which had never before been achieved. With this power, those who could wield it soon launched waves of political reform, scientific inquiry, and rhetorical exploration that began with the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey. These stories were important sociological works of art which compelled mass literacy for the first time in human history (A bit like the Harry Potter effect[1]). It was this mass literacy that supplied both the creative talent as well as the audience for the written word.

Writing as a technology had existed since the 7th millennium BC in the form of Proto-writing. Fast forward to the Mycenaean age and this technology had advanced to the form found in Linear B script (1450 BC). Later, the introduction of the Hebrew script in the eighth century BC allowed the ancient Greeks to form an alphabet that could be easily learned and transmitted[2]. It should not appear too much like a coincidence that the stories of Homer were first recorded around the 7th century BC, on the heels of the new alphabet.

It is telling that the first major written works using this new popular alphabet were less history textbooks and more historical fiction. Whether Homer was one man or many is beside the point. What matters is that multiple versions of his epics existed[3], likely written by the newly literate & newly free citizenry of Athens who had inherited these stories orally for centuries.

This is a period in history akin to both the American revolution and the ‘60s in the western hemisphere. For Breisach[4] to say Homer is a bard whose intent and skill was lacking that of modern historians, is to say Bob Marley, Dylan, or The Beatles were bad history teachers. The narratives of historical events have, throughout all time, been used by the powerful to influence others[5]. The brilliance of the Greek enlightenment is that, from Homer and Solon onward, democracy had a chance precisely because the narrative had been democratized. To contradict Breisach, “The idea that the events of the past could influence those of the present”[6] was ever-present in the minds of the bards, though perhaps not their audiences. Scanlon is emphatic on this point when he states that “Most ancient historians were keenly aware of and engaged in contemporary issues, and they had fundamental views motivating their projects.”[7]

These “fundamental issues as how one knows about the past, which forces shape events, and what is the purpose of historical accounts”[8] should not be relegated to sponsored narratives (such as Xenophon’s or those of Theopompus of Chios) lest we forget the real experiences of the people. This unfortunate loss of history has indeed been our inheritance from the ancient Greek people.

The ability for the people to tell their story and, warn others of the dangers imposed on them by the powerful, is first seen in Homer and is what democracy is all about. The battle for the narrative in ancient Greece lost that freedom to the point where Roman era historians such as Polybius wrote universal histories where Rome dominated the scene.

That this battle was a civil war between the people and the elite can be gleaned in Breisach’s statement that “In the fourth century Homer's influence was still so strong that Plato regretted the poet's hold on Hellenic education and his power over individuals.”[9]. That Plato, a known elitist and dissenter against democracy, should bemoan democratic education in action over 200 years after the reforms of Solon, shows us how fundamental this story was to the education of the citizenry in democratic Athens. It also provides a warning to our own era.

The process which would ultimately end in the defeat of democracy is painted with the development of history as a genre. The path to truth and strength begins with the historical fiction of Homer being recited in the symposium as a form of education for young men. This grew into a more formalized concept of education for the involved citizenry through Progymnasmata (an education which included historical events and characters)[10]. This progressed with the first logographers such as Hecataeus of Miletus[11]. However, despite Breisach’s statement that the logographers “Around 500B.C…began to grope towards the concept of continuous time”[12], Persky shows that “age-based organization was one of the defining features of Greek society…established by the Bronze Age”[13] thus, showing the concept of tracking and organizing of social markers based on time well before the logographers.

It seems far more likely that the expansion of the Greek city-states into empires was the cause for the emerging need to tell a history that explained the life of a city-state with its highly inclusive attitude toward its conquered peoples. The Greeks had for so long been on the receiving end of culture[14], they now wished to show how connected they were to their new subjects. By the time history matured to fruition, Rome had learned the lesson and taken the lead, making the Greeks their subjects and including them in their Roman-centered universal histories.  

It is of some interest that the founding fathers of the genre simply created a framework of wars by which to remember humanity. While Homer provided a “don’t touch” warning to warfare and pride, future historians provided a “how to” manual which encouraged pan-Hellenism through warfare. The primary difference lay in origin of intent. The Persian Wars began in Ionia soon after Cleisthenes' reforms and were documented by Herodotus, a native Ionian[15]. Herodotus then, could be seen as the original Ben Franklin, writing to encourage unity against an invading force. This defensive posture can be seen in his writing. We are not only recipients of the military events he wrote on but, we have inherited “the spirit of inquiry, … applied both to his original focus on events that were secular, political, and human”[16]. Herodotus’ uncle Panyassis, a famous poet[17], may have contributed to his skill and broad interests. This example shows how limiting a single-genre image of any time is. For this reason, Herodotus may have been not only the father of history, but the last historian of the era. What follows could be seen rather as elitist Generals, war reporters, and fifth column propagandists.

The Peloponnesian War following not long after the Persian Wars, and documented by Thucydides, is fundamentally different in that Thucydides had been a General in that war and so his work “reflects the…hoplite culture”[18] of the mainland and of an attacking army. Further, his perspective reflected his family’s political and economic positions. What we can trust however, is that his family connections provided him a reason to write on behalf of the Athenian elite. Thucydides did not only write the events of a military history. He went further by teaching the next generation of Greek decision makers how to handle the next threat from abroad.

According to Breisach, Thucydides introduced the concept that “The Peloponnesian War resulted not from the capricious wishes of gods or kings, or from misguided human passions, but from the ceaseless human quest for power”[19]. This is, in essence, producing the same warning to the Greeks as had been made by the Gods through the epics of Homer. This time however, the same pride the epics had warned against was being displayed by the new logographers by excluding truth in favor of fact.

The generation preceding the Peloponnesian War to the invasion of the Macedonian barbarians marked the fall of City-State power, finally resulting in a shift of power to the Macedonian kingdom. During this void where no great war united the people, the narrative battle for cultural sovereignty raged. The tug-of-war ranged from Isocrates’ inciting a new great war with Persia[20] to the return to local histories (Attidographers) but with the new techniques from the past century, to the writings of Xenophon which ultimately promoted Hellenic disunity. Xenophon seems less a historian and more a propagandist to the highest bidder. This marks the point in history when historians became the mercenaries they wrote about.

“Gone was the passionate concern that had made Thucydides, for example, analyze…to search for the forces tearing apart the Athenian Empire”[21]. Rather, the public was deemed redundant and so efforts to work with them moved from teaching statesmanship to encouraging distractions from decision making. This shift marked the end of a fleeting truth; a return to a narrative formed by the powerful.

  Bibliography

 Bernstein, William J. Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet. London: Atlantic, 2013.

 Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, & Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

 Gibson, Craig A. “Learning Greek History in the Ancient Classroom: The Evidence of the Treatises on Progymnasmata.” Classical Philology 99, no. 2 (2004): 103–29. doi:10.1086/423858.

 The Homer Multitext Project. “HMT Blog.” Accessed May 20, 2020. https://www.homermultitext.org/.

 Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991.

 Homer. The Odyssey, Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001.

 Ogden, Daniel. A Companion to Greek Religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2007.

 Persky, Richard K. “Kairos: a Cultural History of Time in the Greek Polis��� PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2009.

Person. “Harry Potter Helps Lift School Literacy Rates.” The Sydney Morning Herald. Last modified September 19, 2002. https://www.smh.com.au/national/harry-potter-helps-lift-school-literacy-rates-20020919-gdfnbn.html.

Scanlon, Thomas Francis. Greek Historiography. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015.

 [1] Person, “Harry Potter Helps Lift School Literacy Rates.” The Sydney Morning Herald. Last modified September 19, 2002. https://www.smh.com.au/national/harry-potter-helps-lift-school-literacy-rates-20020919-gdfnbn.html.

[2] William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word (London: Atlantic, 2013), 12.

[3] “HMT Blog.” The Homer Multitext Project. Accessed May 20, 2020. https://www.homermultitext.org/.

[4] Ernst Breisach, Historiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 6.

[5] Bernstein, Masters of the Word.

[6] Breisach, Historiography, 7.

[7] Thomas F. Scanlon, Greek Historiography (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015),5.

[8] Breisach, Historiography, 6.

[9] Breisach, Historiography, 8.

[10] Craig A. Gibson, “Learning Greek History in the Ancient Classroom: The Evidence of the Treatises on Progymnasmata.” Classical Philology 99, no. 2 (2004): 103–29. doi:10.1086/423858.

[11] Scanlon, Greek Historiography, 19.

[12] Breisach, Historiography, 10.

[13] Richard K. Persky, “Kairos: a Cultural History of Time in the Greek Polis” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2009), 69.

[14] Daniel Ogden, A Companion to Greek Religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2007.

[15] Scanlon, Greek Historiography, 9.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Scanlon, Greek Historiography, 9.

[19] Breisach, Historiography, 15.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Breisach, Historiography, 31.

[rexylafemme]

infinite deaths lead to infinite transformations

i recognize lately that there's this lingering sense of failure & loss & sadness living in my body, existing just out of frame in my thoughts (meaning, i guess, i don't give real space, attentive space to), having specifically to do with [said in bratty, tongue-in-cheek, big big air quotes] "my identity," "my body." 

the other night i was on the phone with a dear kindred friend of many years, was responding to something she said and i said, "if i were you, that would make me feel really bad. i mean, if i were a human being, that would..." i stopped and then we both started cracking up. freudian slip. in the moment, i'm not quite sure what i meant, but it felt like i really meant it, really natural to say. not being a human being is a sense i have about myself, i think because humanness is defined by things that are fundamentally exclusive of my experience, how i see myself, how i think, how i move through the world, what my body is. also, trans people just ARE mythical creatures.

anyway, whatever. i don't "exist" technically, but i do exist actually. and also, we have always existed, we-- trans people [which i use as a really broad, inclusive term to include all of the figures who never are/were able to claim that term, all of the figures for whom it does/did not exist, all of the figures it is/was robbed from, all of the figures who it is/was rewritten out of] have always existed. we are not new.

anyway, whatever. this quieted, stifled, devastated feeling of loss/grief/sadness/failure. though i wrote an article about it, i've never actually grieved testosterone. grieved taking it, grieved what i would not have not taking it, the death of the possibility. that my decision to stop was motivated by a number of things we aren't really able to talk about with pride, gusto, ease. [who is we in this sentence, all my non-human, trans self-states (?)  strung together through this thread of my life, the life i didn't ask for but i have anyway and try to appreciate tho it seems widely the Reality i live in, am called Human or not-Human in, doesn't appreciate me often-- tho i have a lot of really amazing loving people in my life far and wide, and, yes, have fought to carve out space to be seen in, acknowledged in, appreciated in [not just for trans-ness] however fully or un-fully, however full of truths or lies.]   i'm fucking crazy-- i identify that way, probably ahead of any other thing i am other than being poor and white, i am crazy before i am trans, i am crazy before i am anything that defines what my body is bc who cares and who knows but me [tho i recognize the political importance of identifying my body as something, i guess, even when it is nothing, feels like it or i am outside of it mostly or effectively it is treated like nothing, by me, others, lovers, the state, etc], i am crazy before i am queer-- if even i am that, having always had an ambivalent relationship with that term given its evolution as this annoying and unfortunate category that recycles exclusion and problems of white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, gatekeeping, rules for how to be, who to fuck/love/be close to and how, how to look, what to wear, what to like, builds institutions whose foundations are based in all of the above, etc. how quickly we forget how poor crazy black, brown, and white people radicalized the word queer, how it became Queer, trademarked by judith butler et al, liberal arts colleges, universities, research journals and then further used to silence, reject, consume, criticize, murder-by-complicity poor crazy black, brown, and white trans and queer people. rageful yawn! [so boring, so anger-producing, so over it]. and all of this so then jill soloway can make "the best tv series of the century"  [so says a white cis old dude w/ money named sparrow to my trans coworker who gets fed up with him after he says something like 'oh your name is different than it was a few months ago, that's so interesting. no one changes their names anymore unless they're transsexuals" and then they were like "yeah that would be me." "OHHHH TRANSPARENT IS THE BEST TV SHOW OF THE CENTURY," sparrow says in response. sparrow, who said to me, as many before him have and many after will: "YOUR name is rex? YOU? it's so WEIRD, YOUUU have that name???! wow, who would've thought!" cuz being a grown-ass white man self-named after a fucking bird isn't weird at all. transparent, yay, the tv show about US, that's not really about US. and i watch it so i guess i'm probably a hypocritical asshole, but i am starving for some representation. anyway, whatever. i'm probably crazy and poor before other things because crazy and poor provides the wash over which everything else i live is experienced. crazy, poor, grieving this synthetic steroid i experienced as poison in my body and brain. this thing i can't have that i want. this toxic thing. toxic because it erodes away my vag, toxic because it could destroy my liver, toxic because continued use over time could pose all these extreme health problems, but who knows really! cuz, why would we study that?! and when we do study it, why would we focus on the multiplicity of bodies and spectrum of people who approach HRT?! toxic because i am a crazy poor person with a lot of health problems to begin with that i don’t talk about and i probably would develop all the like, weird anomalous issues that "most people just won't ever have to worry about"! [most people is... ? ]

toxic because i lost all track of how i related to myself, how i felt, or what i even wanted while i was on it. i know what i want and what i like [about what it gave me]: more hair everywhere [yay!], androgynizing body shape [awesome!], growth in my underwear [i don't really know what to call what in-betweenness is going on there, cockette i say to myself but that feels maybe too campy for general use and not sexy however fitting and hilarious. anyway, it's cool and fun!], androgynizing voice [sometimes sultry, sometimes pubescent, sometimes girly, fran fine as a man laugh, excellent]. and the goal was always androgynizing, was always becoming something else, not one thing. tiresias, venus as a boy, dionysus, whatever.

but so i am sad because i can't move forward with those things that i like. the embodiment. and embodiment for me, as a crazy poor person, is constantly difficult. am i ever even in my body, do i have one, what is it good for, why. i moved further away from a sense of even desiring "masculinity" when i started t. that was a gift, to realize my desire wasn’t about acquisition of “maleness.” i just wanted all the things i described above: the physical changes that for whatever reason signify "maleness" or "trans-maleness" and therefore told people that's what i wanted because i wanted those physical attributes. i don't wanna be a man or a trans man. man, not something that i ever felt like. boy, dude, male, maybe, some hybrid masc/femme thing, cross-human.  i definitely didn't want the head-hair loss/thinning, which happened and put me into a neurotic, severely gender-NONCONFIRMING frenzy. i can't lose my hair i can't lose my hair. call it femme vanity, i dunno or really care, a bitch isn't gonna be bald, that's it, not ok not possible not happening so that also informed my decision to stop t, tho i didn't really admit it. i won't say i didn't/don't want the "he" pronoun, sometimes. i want them all. i'm greedy and excessive and i don’t like being limited. i want to be what i am: a mix, a shapeshifter. one angle i look like one thing, one angle another. the reason people stare at me all the time: bewildered, upset, confused, looking for clear markers. staring at my crotch or into my eyes, my face, working out their assessments. judging what i'm wearing against my facial hair against my makeup against my voice against an absence of breasts against my name against my...

anyway, whatever. i am sad because i can kinda have all of those things: more hair, more androgynized body. if i try hard enough. if i have enough time and money. because i could see a nutritionist and an herbalist specializing in trans health [they exist if you can pay to see them!]. or alternately, i could DIY it, buy all the herbs in the androgynizing herb regimen i came up with through research, and i could take them every day for... forever if i wanted, or for however long i wanted to, based solely on my desire to do it. not if i wanted, if i could. but i don't have the money. and i can't. and i could do all the exercises that would androgynize my shape. if i had the time and the energy. if i could get my shit together enough. if i weren't cycling in and out of housing insecurity since i returned to nyc and even before and through my whole life. if i weren't, some days, just able to do the bare minimum for myself, if i weren't racked with body pains somedays from a combination of: the things i do to my body that are bad for it [binding], not being able to sleep, work, running around, having a sick, sensitive body, the ways i carry stress in my body and where. if i didn't have problems prioritizing myself. if i weren't afraid of the structure of my exercise and nutrition regimen evolving into eating disorder and unhealthy obsession like they have before. if i weren't crazy.

it becomes about all the things i am always failing at that i can't do much about other than be patient and accept the material/systemic/emotional limitations that frame my life. back to poor, back to crazy: why i can't move forward at the speed that i would like to with my "transition." crazy means i can't be on t without being crazier and more sleepless and more in trauma self-states. crazy means i sometimes can't live up to my own structures and routines for my own health: body, mind, spirit. poor means i can't go to the trans nutritionist, the trans herbalist, buy the herbs and have them all the time. and i'm trying so hard to get that money, to do that. or, i'm trying so hard to be okay with not having what i want, what i need. remembering it's not my fault. there's nothing i can do about it. but that's not really a consolation so much as it is another reminder of my powerlessness to shift certain realities that affect not only me, but so many other people i care about, or people i do not know, everyone who should have everything that they want and need, regardless of who they are and what they can afford materially/socially/politically.

and i am grieving for all the knowledge we have lost and is not widely accessible. because tho i may not have the evidence or may not have done all the research, i fucking know people have been "transitioning" naturally and through magic for as long as people have existed and throughout all cultural contexts, whether trans-ness has been exalted (and it has, throughout time) or demonized/criminalized/driven underground. our mythological selves.