on being gwyneth

I think I’m done.

For those who occasionally come to this blog to see what’s on my mind or in my life, and who have probably been as frustrated as I am with the continued yawping on insular trans politics, my apologies. When I relaunched the blog I made the mistake of trying to reconnect a little with the online trans ‘sphere, and had forgotten just how quickly and thoroughly it all just pisses me off.

It feeds my anger addiction, which I am working to clear myself of.

So enough. I’m still queer, still politically minded, but I will both refocus and expand. There’s more to life than this.

Cheers.

Addendum: a recent comment prompts me to point out that I’m not shutting down the blog, just redirecting my thought.

“You’re interfering with my fabulosity and specialness, you poser.”

Sorry. You don’t own genderfucking, nor “breaking the binary,” nor even the identity. Read up on some anthropology, if not recent queer history.

“You’re not genderqueer, so you’ve got no right to speak.”

Oh? And just how would you know, little Miss Thing?

I live on the fringes of a community that has internalized identity politics to the point where your politics defines your identity. If, within a given subgroup, your ideological gestures fall short of local requirements, the very first thing that comes under scrutiny is your legitimacy, not only as a fellow traveler, but as a kind of person.

And the tool they use to police these boundaries is language. Every exchange is a question of control, and even topics that allegedly are not about specifying who is and is not a tribe member turn out to be little else, in-group and out-group language and supposedly unique concerns strictly circumscribing a territory defended at first by glib condescension – so much lazy reliance on rote phrases – then by shunning and hostility.

Among the less-committed, thoroughgoing leftists have a reputation for being control-freaks… an attitude that confuses and even enrages those of us on the left who believe we actually seek freedom, not constraint. But the longer I am in contact with a certain strain of ideologically-determined, discourse-enforcing, self-limiting boundary maintenance, the more I sort of get the point.

You know, where I come from, what is now apparently always “derailing” was known as “carrying on a conversation.” Tangents, arguments, etc. were a feature, not a bug. Ideological commitment to a political language of oppression has reduced what could be meaningful, informative exchanges to lecture and applause*, with critical consideration of the premises dismissed as not merely moot, but actively harmful.

Needless to say, I think this is utter bullshit, and resist the increasing reliance on orthodoxy over inquiry.

(* Consider the increasing number of replies to be found on the web that consist of little more than a partial quote and the emphatic word “THIS!”)

I have gone where I had to go to find the love I needed.

The reduction of self to the suffering object, sometimes with the goal of enhancing (especially moral) credibility in a peer group.

It’s a pathology. You get shat on enough, wearing shit on your head becomes a claim to identity.

I’ve had a total of three beers in the past three months, and no other alcohol at all.

If you don’t know me very well, then take my word for it that this is an achievement.

If you do… well, then you know.

“This is all Joker’s fault. What a tool that guy was. Now I have to spend all day computing pi because he plugged in the Overlord.”

(best in-game quote ever, from Mass Effect 2. yeah, you had to be there.)

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first movabletype, then b2evo, and now wordpress. think i’ll stick with it a while.

still futzing with the import.