Right, so I didn't manage to use the summer to get a lot of work done, but I did use it to poke my brain, see a therapist, discover that I actually have pretty severe anxiety, and start taking steps towards figuring out strategies to overcome this. Go me!
Also, exposure therapy sucks mightily.
But today I scheduled writing time, made a plan, and actually did what I had set out to do. Words on a page. Not submittable, serious words, but words to clarify thoughts, lay out arguments, and so move towards submittable words. This is progress.
Wednesday, 23 September 2015
Wednesday, 19 August 2015
The Gymmening
The first time I went to the gym, I was walked around it and given a sales pitch about personal trainers and prices.
The second time, I tried to give them money but got sent away because the person who could take my money wasn't there.
On the third visit, I gave them money and filled out multiple forms promising that I was totally healthy enough to start doing things to make me more healthy.
The fourth time, I was walked around the gym (again) and told how each of the machines worked, clearly with the assumption that a short demonstration of twenty different things would be easy to remember.
Today, I went back again and was reminded how to use a few of them, along with demonstrating that I could maybe do a pushup or two, so that the guy with the timer and the pen could figure out what he thought I should be trying to do.
I think I might have run out of delaying tactics now. Next time, I will have to do The Exercising.
The second time, I tried to give them money but got sent away because the person who could take my money wasn't there.
On the third visit, I gave them money and filled out multiple forms promising that I was totally healthy enough to start doing things to make me more healthy.
The fourth time, I was walked around the gym (again) and told how each of the machines worked, clearly with the assumption that a short demonstration of twenty different things would be easy to remember.
Today, I went back again and was reminded how to use a few of them, along with demonstrating that I could maybe do a pushup or two, so that the guy with the timer and the pen could figure out what he thought I should be trying to do.
I think I might have run out of delaying tactics now. Next time, I will have to do The Exercising.
Monday, 17 August 2015
Songs Telling Stories
My friends on Facebook are making a valiant effort to keep communicating meaningfully and overthrow the algorithms promoting clickbait and advertisements. People are throwing out conversation starters, random questions and crowdsourcing webcomic and song recommendations.
One of today's requests was for songs with narratives. Not 'just hinting', but straight out telling stories. And...well, a good portion of my music is folk music / singer songwriter / indy whatever that means (I am bad with music genres, just go with it) so I was valiantly restraining myself from posting whole albums. And then I started thinking about it more, and thinking about the types of stories different songs tell.
[ I mean, I long ago faced up to the fact that much of the music I adore comes from a very specific background and tells the story of a particular person.
Really, I have so many stories of the woes of white American men in declining industrial regions, harking back to the golden age of the American Dream and pretending it was a real place...
And then there's some of the British folk, which talks dreamily about soldiers or lords or labourers, and I don't think it's possible to love the music and the tales without implicitly giving it a pass on the things it doesn't talk about or the people who aren't quite counted as people enough to have their stories told or hardships remembered. And then there's the damn gender politics...
- Which isn't to say that some contemporary folk singers aren't doing an awesome job of rebalancing that, through re-interpreting, rewriting and doing their own damn thing. ]
Anyway, that was mostly a lead-in to me linking to a whole lot of music, because I refrained from swamping the Facebook thread with my enthusiasm. This may turn into more than one post on the subject.
First up - because he was the consummate story-teller, and I really can't think of any of his songs which aren't narratives - Harry Chapin. Humanitarian, overworked campaigner, fundraiser and apparently infuriating when he got onto his pet subjects, Congressional Medal of Honor holder, and guy who sang about a very particular America - a combination of the one he lived in and the mythic 'America' that he felt it was a part of.
Okay, he got linked on the original thread for 'Cats in the Cradle'. And, well, that's nice and it went on to be the song he's really well known for, but I think there are better ones.
I mean, the guy wrote a ten minute single based on shootings at the University of Texas.
And sometimes he sang stories about people being ignorant about their oncoming destruction, despite plenty of warning. (If he was still around, I think he would have been one of the people getting Very Angry about climate change deniers, and then he would have sung about it)
I do think that my affection for his stories is one of the reason my music tastes get called depressing. There's a lot of songs where things go wrong, or people end up regretting past deeds and dreaming of what might have beens. Actually, this one is more like a horror story involving a succubus, if your mind twists that way.
And there are less creepy love songs. Some of which are autobiographical, and many of them include that same kind of wistful quality of wanting something and just missing. This one even has a story within a story.
The sad thing is that I could have posted about five songs instead of one for each of those examples.
However, since his post was inspired by my friend SF, I will finish with a song which was written with the kind of poor taste that I think he would appreciate, taking a fatal crash and turning it into a comedy song. A song about a truck, a town called Scranton, Pennsylvania and....30,000 Pounds of Bananas.
One of today's requests was for songs with narratives. Not 'just hinting', but straight out telling stories. And...well, a good portion of my music is folk music / singer songwriter / indy whatever that means (I am bad with music genres, just go with it) so I was valiantly restraining myself from posting whole albums. And then I started thinking about it more, and thinking about the types of stories different songs tell.
[ I mean, I long ago faced up to the fact that much of the music I adore comes from a very specific background and tells the story of a particular person.
Really, I have so many stories of the woes of white American men in declining industrial regions, harking back to the golden age of the American Dream and pretending it was a real place...
And then there's some of the British folk, which talks dreamily about soldiers or lords or labourers, and I don't think it's possible to love the music and the tales without implicitly giving it a pass on the things it doesn't talk about or the people who aren't quite counted as people enough to have their stories told or hardships remembered. And then there's the damn gender politics...
- Which isn't to say that some contemporary folk singers aren't doing an awesome job of rebalancing that, through re-interpreting, rewriting and doing their own damn thing. ]
Anyway, that was mostly a lead-in to me linking to a whole lot of music, because I refrained from swamping the Facebook thread with my enthusiasm. This may turn into more than one post on the subject.
First up - because he was the consummate story-teller, and I really can't think of any of his songs which aren't narratives - Harry Chapin. Humanitarian, overworked campaigner, fundraiser and apparently infuriating when he got onto his pet subjects, Congressional Medal of Honor holder, and guy who sang about a very particular America - a combination of the one he lived in and the mythic 'America' that he felt it was a part of.
Okay, he got linked on the original thread for 'Cats in the Cradle'. And, well, that's nice and it went on to be the song he's really well known for, but I think there are better ones.
I mean, the guy wrote a ten minute single based on shootings at the University of Texas.
And sometimes he sang stories about people being ignorant about their oncoming destruction, despite plenty of warning. (If he was still around, I think he would have been one of the people getting Very Angry about climate change deniers, and then he would have sung about it)
I do think that my affection for his stories is one of the reason my music tastes get called depressing. There's a lot of songs where things go wrong, or people end up regretting past deeds and dreaming of what might have beens. Actually, this one is more like a horror story involving a succubus, if your mind twists that way.
And there are less creepy love songs. Some of which are autobiographical, and many of them include that same kind of wistful quality of wanting something and just missing. This one even has a story within a story.
The sad thing is that I could have posted about five songs instead of one for each of those examples.
However, since his post was inspired by my friend SF, I will finish with a song which was written with the kind of poor taste that I think he would appreciate, taking a fatal crash and turning it into a comedy song. A song about a truck, a town called Scranton, Pennsylvania and....30,000 Pounds of Bananas.
Sunday, 16 August 2015
Summer Developments
I know, I know, it;s been a long time since the last post. I seem to have spent the Spring (and most of the Summer) in the grip of depression and anxiety. On the plus side, I now have a therapist who was able to actually point out to me that I do actually fit diagnostic criteria for pretty severe anxiety.
(Me: But I don't really feel anxious unless I do something like try to work or talk to someone, and I don't get panic attacks.
Him: So, do you avoid doing any of this long list of things?
Me: Oh yeah, pretty much all of them. The thought of them is terrifying.
Him: Yeah. That's anxiety.
Me: *Lightbulb* Ooooooh, so I'm actually just so awesome at avoidance that I don't even notice I'm doing it any more? Wow, my brain fucks me over in some interesting ways...)
This has been...interesting and kind of awesome in that now I'm learning how to recognise feelings of anxiety instead of just...oh, I have an overwhelming desire not to do that thing that I was planning to. Unfortunately, the internet has provided no magic ways to get over this, except CBT and graduated exposure - which kind of condenses down to 'get the fuck up and get over it (but, you know, over time) and you might just have to accept living in a degree of discomfort for ever. But hey, you'll notice it less as you go on to do even MORE uncomfortable things'.
So, I've been trying to do more things, and notice what my brain is veering away from and seeing if I can redirect it. Which is useful but also exhausting because it adds an extra level of fighting myself.
(Apparently one thing I need to get used to the discomfort of is letting myself exist in social situations. So I'll start with the internet, post a few things and then maybe actually tell more than one person that this blog exists.)
The other thing I need to get into is the habit of writing. Expressing myself is one of the things that I've slowly let dwindle away - honestly, it's much easier to say nothing or focus on being utterly unremarkable than risk venturing an opinion or being creative...and that's a line of thought that I've been following for years. And of course, because I rarely risk it, I never learn to get over that fear of exposure - putting myself out there (where ever that somewhere is) where another actual person could have an opinion about me or my words.
Why yes, I do need to write a 100,000 word thesis in the next two years. And publish papers in journals. And speak at conferences in front of people I would like to be able to consider as peers.
These things cannot exist together. So, either I suck it up, retrain my brain and fear reflexes and learn to live with discomfort, or the PhD I've been working towards for 5 years will turn out to be a pipedream.
(Me: But I don't really feel anxious unless I do something like try to work or talk to someone, and I don't get panic attacks.
Him: So, do you avoid doing any of this long list of things?
Me: Oh yeah, pretty much all of them. The thought of them is terrifying.
Him: Yeah. That's anxiety.
Me: *Lightbulb* Ooooooh, so I'm actually just so awesome at avoidance that I don't even notice I'm doing it any more? Wow, my brain fucks me over in some interesting ways...)
This has been...interesting and kind of awesome in that now I'm learning how to recognise feelings of anxiety instead of just...oh, I have an overwhelming desire not to do that thing that I was planning to. Unfortunately, the internet has provided no magic ways to get over this, except CBT and graduated exposure - which kind of condenses down to 'get the fuck up and get over it (but, you know, over time) and you might just have to accept living in a degree of discomfort for ever. But hey, you'll notice it less as you go on to do even MORE uncomfortable things'.
So, I've been trying to do more things, and notice what my brain is veering away from and seeing if I can redirect it. Which is useful but also exhausting because it adds an extra level of fighting myself.
(Apparently one thing I need to get used to the discomfort of is letting myself exist in social situations. So I'll start with the internet, post a few things and then maybe actually tell more than one person that this blog exists.)
The other thing I need to get into is the habit of writing. Expressing myself is one of the things that I've slowly let dwindle away - honestly, it's much easier to say nothing or focus on being utterly unremarkable than risk venturing an opinion or being creative...and that's a line of thought that I've been following for years. And of course, because I rarely risk it, I never learn to get over that fear of exposure - putting myself out there (where ever that somewhere is) where another actual person could have an opinion about me or my words.
Why yes, I do need to write a 100,000 word thesis in the next two years. And publish papers in journals. And speak at conferences in front of people I would like to be able to consider as peers.
These things cannot exist together. So, either I suck it up, retrain my brain and fear reflexes and learn to live with discomfort, or the PhD I've been working towards for 5 years will turn out to be a pipedream.
Saturday, 7 March 2015
February Review
Winter still had a sting in the tail for me. Was it that I said I was so glad to be rid of January? It's now just one week away from the end of the second University term, and I'm not really sure what I've achieved so far. February had... Nights out with friends and obscene jokes, a Valentine's card, adventures squeezed into the back of a tiny car, mashed avocado on toast, a film festival and guests visiting, velvet jackets, a ride in the boot of a car and talking with ghosts in a cathedral.
On the other hand it also had antibiotics which triggered depression, two colds which left my head thick and fuzzy, frustrated attempts to find a house for next year, avoiding people and my office, too many days of missed seminars or talks and nights both wishing and unable to go out.
It is largely because of those that this update is so late. I looked at the targets I set myself and they seem like a joke, however moderate they were.
February targets:
Significant things:
On the other hand it also had antibiotics which triggered depression, two colds which left my head thick and fuzzy, frustrated attempts to find a house for next year, avoiding people and my office, too many days of missed seminars or talks and nights both wishing and unable to go out.
It is largely because of those that this update is so late. I looked at the targets I set myself and they seem like a joke, however moderate they were.
February targets:
- 2 long bits of writing - I haven't even achieved 1, though I have managed quite a few pages of notes
- 5 blog posts (this one doesn't count) - I posted 2
- Attend 3 large social gatherings - I'm trying to remember...I definitely made it to two, possibly three
- Read 1 theoretical text and 1 biography - I think I did read 1 theoretical text, but not a biography
Significant things:
- Three cheers for CBT? I have my doubts about it and I think it is a far from universally good therapeutic technique, but I think I am at a stage where it can be helpful. That is, I am aware that I am mildly depressed and want techniques to help me stop my brain spiralling onwards into more serious depression, because it's been there before and has bad habits. I'm taking a course which seems to be helping spur me into helpful actions at least.
- I have started to organise my notebooks and type up notes from last term.
- I had another meeting with supervisor. She still seems happy with what I am doing, so...
- I volunteered to write a survey for the department. This should be exciting :)
- I have started 'timesheeting' my work so that I can keep track of where time is going and note down when I've worked on what
- 1 piece of longer writing for second supervisor
- 2 short first draft pieces of writing for first supervisor
- Finish organising notebooks
- 4 blog posts
- Complete survey successfully and prepare to send out
Friday, 13 February 2015
A Late Realisation
Today I realised that wanting to stay in bed all day and not leave to eat or fetch entertainment is actually a sign that I am ill, and even if I COULD force myself out of bed, I probably wouldn't be able to achieve anything. The issue when your job mostly involves thinking very hard about complicated things is that when your head feels like it is made of cotton wool then there probably isn't much point in even trying to force yourself to engage.
Now, you'd think that I might have realised this way before now, but apparently I really hadn't. I think its the after effect of years of borderline mental health issues, where I assumed that if I could just get over myself and actually leave the bed / room / building or pick up an article and concentrate properly then I'd get over my general malaise and be able to work properly. Well, today I picked myself up out of bed by the early evening, and took myself out to a couple of lectures that I've been looking forward to for a few weeks... And while it wasn't a total waste of time, I was aware that I just wasn't capable of engaging with it as I would like to. It was taking all my energy just to follow the arguments, I didn't have a hope in hell of evaluating them.
When I realised this, it was a light-dawning, choirs singing revelatory moment where suddenly I could accept that I'd actually been ill today, rather than just kind of crap. Accepting that I couldn't realistically have done any work suddenly took away a whole burden of background guilt about 'taking the day off'.
I'm not sure if, now that I've finally come to this point, it will stick. So, this post is partly here to remind myself in the future that it's actually not the usual state of affairs for me to want to do nothing and not move for the day - and when it happens it means that I'm probably ill.
Now, you'd think that I might have realised this way before now, but apparently I really hadn't. I think its the after effect of years of borderline mental health issues, where I assumed that if I could just get over myself and actually leave the bed / room / building or pick up an article and concentrate properly then I'd get over my general malaise and be able to work properly. Well, today I picked myself up out of bed by the early evening, and took myself out to a couple of lectures that I've been looking forward to for a few weeks... And while it wasn't a total waste of time, I was aware that I just wasn't capable of engaging with it as I would like to. It was taking all my energy just to follow the arguments, I didn't have a hope in hell of evaluating them.
When I realised this, it was a light-dawning, choirs singing revelatory moment where suddenly I could accept that I'd actually been ill today, rather than just kind of crap. Accepting that I couldn't realistically have done any work suddenly took away a whole burden of background guilt about 'taking the day off'.
I'm not sure if, now that I've finally come to this point, it will stick. So, this post is partly here to remind myself in the future that it's actually not the usual state of affairs for me to want to do nothing and not move for the day - and when it happens it means that I'm probably ill.
Sunday, 1 February 2015
January Review
A month I am very glad indeed to see the back of. Going from the end of sumbel season (and, admittedly, a very good New Years' party) and travelling back to the north east, trying to get back into the working mindset. Still just as cold and dark as December, though, with no real sign of days getting longer. Walking home in the dark gets old, and the snow was lovely but the ice is perilous.
I did have another PhD student look askance at the fact that I could enjoy the prettiness of the snow though. I pointed out that it wasn't going to settle, and it was practically CGI quality snow falling in front of a cathedral lit up for the night - glorious. His response? "Well, when you get to my age you don't really find it that exciting." He is twenty-three. I responded with the hope that once he reached my grand old age of twenty-six he would once again take delight in the world...
So, achievements this month:
Long bits of writing done: 1 (should have been 2, that is now trailing over into February)
Blog posts written: 3
Books read: 0 completely (Theory is, if I start tracking it, it will improve)
Books bought: 3 (not too bad, a little high. On the plus side, did discover a couple of ebook repositories, and am arranging a loan of another text I want to read.)
Significant things:
I did have another PhD student look askance at the fact that I could enjoy the prettiness of the snow though. I pointed out that it wasn't going to settle, and it was practically CGI quality snow falling in front of a cathedral lit up for the night - glorious. His response? "Well, when you get to my age you don't really find it that exciting." He is twenty-three. I responded with the hope that once he reached my grand old age of twenty-six he would once again take delight in the world...
So, achievements this month:
Long bits of writing done: 1 (should have been 2, that is now trailing over into February)
Blog posts written: 3
Books read: 0 completely (Theory is, if I start tracking it, it will improve)
Books bought: 3 (not too bad, a little high. On the plus side, did discover a couple of ebook repositories, and am arranging a loan of another text I want to read.)
Significant things:
- Sat down for a morning with some bibliographic software, put together a system that works and organised most of the PDFs from last term.
- Had an excellent supervision and set some targets for next month.
- Found login details for most of my blogs and actually started using them.
- Managed to arrange social things to happen twice.
- Had a really crap month, but have not dropped anything really important, and have made plans to help with next month.
- 2 long bits of writing
- 5 blog posts (this one doesn't count)
- Attend 3 large social gatherings
- Read 1 theoretical text and 1 biography
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
A handful of things
- Three weeks into term and I'm only just feeling like I'm picking up what I'm supposed to be doing again. People keep talking about this writing thing and I always mean to do, but never seem to be quite ready. Challenge for this term is to be less easily distracted from trains of thought by seeing a shiny book or going to a fun talk.
- On the other hand, I need to be pretty positive about what I've been doing, because since coming back here I've been feeling like I've been dragging myself around all day. Which I had no way to clearly explain, until Robot Hugs drew it.
- My new love is this site which produces lovely background noise. Turns out my favourite combination is thunder and rain, which kind of feels like warm stroking for my brain. Or a blanket, to use a slightly clearer simile.
- Today I have accomplished extreme cleverness (by my standards). I now have all of my references on a browser that lives on a flash drive! This should hopefully be both an intuitive system for me to use and also get around the issue of Uni computers, which reset all preferences to defaults every time you log off, thus making them buggers to work on.
Thursday, 13 November 2014
Nights Drawing In
I am not good at winter. It always takes me by surprise when I need to start wearing more layers, and I bristle with annoyance and spend a few weeks shivering before I relearn how to keep myself warm. I can enjoy the autumn colours, the smell of a hazy morning and the start of the changing season, but then once we move into November the dark mornings and evenings start to take their toll. Getting out of bed becomes ever more difficult (and so does leaving the house). I start wanting to take care of myself by doing nothing but eating and sleeping, and hibernation is just impossible when I've got the rest of my life still going on at the same pace.
I have a sunlight lamp - I call it my false sun god - and I spend time each day with it pointing obnoxiously brightly at my face to help me feel a bit more alive. I try to get up and exercise each day - and in my new house I'm a mile away from my office and town, so I walk at least two miles a day. I can still feel depression creeping towards me though, in an exhausting game of 'keep-away' where I tot up each small victory as proof that I am still functioning and fending off the seasonal blues (I often work off to-do lists. When I am doing well, the items I plan include reading whole books, reorganising my desk, planning papers and suchlike. On a bad day, I get to tick off eating meals and washing up). This year is worse, I think, because I am in a new place with housemates I very rarely see (we are all busy students, in different fields) and just starting PhD study.
This stretch heading towards midwinter is better than afterwards though. I know that very soon the christmas lights will come out, and I need to start planning and putting time into preparations for holiday events and gifts. It might be dark at four in the afternoon, but lights in windows (and on roofs, and all over town, and frankly being really tacky in a lot of places) and the building anticipation help my mood enormously. The really difficult bit is post-holiday, when new year jubilance fades but it is still dark and all you can do is wait for the light to slowly come back.
In the meantime, I am going to go eat some soup and light candles.
I have a sunlight lamp - I call it my false sun god - and I spend time each day with it pointing obnoxiously brightly at my face to help me feel a bit more alive. I try to get up and exercise each day - and in my new house I'm a mile away from my office and town, so I walk at least two miles a day. I can still feel depression creeping towards me though, in an exhausting game of 'keep-away' where I tot up each small victory as proof that I am still functioning and fending off the seasonal blues (I often work off to-do lists. When I am doing well, the items I plan include reading whole books, reorganising my desk, planning papers and suchlike. On a bad day, I get to tick off eating meals and washing up). This year is worse, I think, because I am in a new place with housemates I very rarely see (we are all busy students, in different fields) and just starting PhD study.
This stretch heading towards midwinter is better than afterwards though. I know that very soon the christmas lights will come out, and I need to start planning and putting time into preparations for holiday events and gifts. It might be dark at four in the afternoon, but lights in windows (and on roofs, and all over town, and frankly being really tacky in a lot of places) and the building anticipation help my mood enormously. The really difficult bit is post-holiday, when new year jubilance fades but it is still dark and all you can do is wait for the light to slowly come back.
In the meantime, I am going to go eat some soup and light candles.
Thursday, 26 July 2012
Quick Hit: The Men Who Made Us Fat
This documentary can be found in 12 parts on Youtube, and it's an interesting romp through recent food history, from Nixon's agricultural policies to Sunny Delight turning a child orange.
In three episodes it looks at the rise of fast food chains and the impact of high fructose corn syrup, the economics and behavioural psychology of 'super-sized' portions plus the invention of snacking, and the impact of food packaging, legislation and 'health' foods. There's a lovely degree of paranoia around businesses lobbying MEPs and MPs (and a reminder that Andrew Lansley, when looking for a way to reduce child obesity, sat down with the people marketing, selling and profiting from unhealthy food to discuss if they could possibly maybe see a way forward to cut their profits voluntarily), but also a level of recognition that there is economic logic behind enticing people to buy more food that they like. Some of the interviews with people who were in the industry thirty or forty years ago were fascinating - a discussion with a farmer in Indiana about the change to over-producing corn, and chatting with the man who introduced counter service in the UK.
Mostly, watching it made me very hungry.
In terms of fat-shaming, it skirted the edges a lot. In its defence: there was a whole section on the neurological and biochemical responses to food - that sugar can stop people feeling full, that people don't notice if portion sizes are gradually increased, that our brains reward us more for eating sugar and fatty food, that we are duped by marketing etc. (Consumers are portrayed to an extent as being entirely motivated by biological motivations for sugar and shiny packaging - but that is pretty much as they tend to be seen by sciences and economics anyway)
While 'being obese' is presented as a universal negative, the whole series is dedicated to unpicking structural causes and patterns in food production and marketing as the cause, and there is a lot of talk of people who are trying to eat healthily and lose weight, but are unable to do so due to the food industry itself. A couple of interviewees do start to head off into individual-blame territory, and are redirected. Despite that, there were a hell of a lot of stock shots of walking headless bodies
Conclusion: Nice enough basic documentary series, interesting interviews, some of the footage was overused enough to irritate when it was watched as a block rather than (as I suspect was intended) with a week between episodes.
In three episodes it looks at the rise of fast food chains and the impact of high fructose corn syrup, the economics and behavioural psychology of 'super-sized' portions plus the invention of snacking, and the impact of food packaging, legislation and 'health' foods. There's a lovely degree of paranoia around businesses lobbying MEPs and MPs (and a reminder that Andrew Lansley, when looking for a way to reduce child obesity, sat down with the people marketing, selling and profiting from unhealthy food to discuss if they could possibly maybe see a way forward to cut their profits voluntarily), but also a level of recognition that there is economic logic behind enticing people to buy more food that they like. Some of the interviews with people who were in the industry thirty or forty years ago were fascinating - a discussion with a farmer in Indiana about the change to over-producing corn, and chatting with the man who introduced counter service in the UK.
Mostly, watching it made me very hungry.
In terms of fat-shaming, it skirted the edges a lot. In its defence: there was a whole section on the neurological and biochemical responses to food - that sugar can stop people feeling full, that people don't notice if portion sizes are gradually increased, that our brains reward us more for eating sugar and fatty food, that we are duped by marketing etc. (Consumers are portrayed to an extent as being entirely motivated by biological motivations for sugar and shiny packaging - but that is pretty much as they tend to be seen by sciences and economics anyway)
While 'being obese' is presented as a universal negative, the whole series is dedicated to unpicking structural causes and patterns in food production and marketing as the cause, and there is a lot of talk of people who are trying to eat healthily and lose weight, but are unable to do so due to the food industry itself. A couple of interviewees do start to head off into individual-blame territory, and are redirected. Despite that, there were a hell of a lot of stock shots of walking headless bodies
Conclusion: Nice enough basic documentary series, interesting interviews, some of the footage was overused enough to irritate when it was watched as a block rather than (as I suspect was intended) with a week between episodes.
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Magical Intent Strikes Again!
I was in London not long ago, and I made my regular trip to Lush in Covent Garden. While I was there, as well as the usual demonstrations of bath bombs and face masks made of porridge oats, I was asked to sign a petition regarding the EU prohibitions on animal testing for cosmetics.
The person who asked me to sign was, admittedly, a little hazy on the details other than that they considered animal testing for goods which are not medically necessary to be a Bad Thing.
Well, I signed the petition, and then investigated a little more. So far as I can tell, the EU has been gradually introducing legislation to prohibit using animal subjects to test for particular reactions to cosmetics. In 2013, the third phase of this is supposed to kick in – though let's be clear: a lot of it has already come into effect. The legislation was agreed in 2003 (though it had been in the works since 1998), and a wide swathe of tests have already been banned. The particulars of the last bit of legislation include prohibiting the import of cosmetics which have been tested on animals and banning the remaining toxicity and carcinogenicity tests.
The outcry from the cosmetics industry, and the basis on which they are appealing for a delay to the legislation, is that there are not viable alternatives for carrying out these tests. This does sound like an almost valid reason for people who aren't strongly committed to animal rights – after all, you can argue that it sounds far more practical for toxicity tests to be carried out on animals, rather than people where the effect of failed trials could be horrific. But this is exactly the same argument that was made in 2003 and 2009 – when other toxicity and irritancy tests were prohibited. The industry has been accused of dragging its feet – after all, there has been a 14 year warning that this will happen. A last minute claim that there are no viable alternatives (but that, maybe, there just might be one by 2017 if you delay the legislation...) sounds like a last attempt to delay standards that they do not want to comply with.
So, after that research, I was pretty happy with having signed that petition. But that wasn't what I wanted to write about. Today, I saw the video of the live performance 'endurance' art [trigger warning for violence and abuse] that Lush put on in a shop window, in which a woman playing an 'animal subject' was put through various tests by scientists, which included restraints, shaving her head, injections, forcing substances into her mouth and which concluded by having her carried out of the shop and placed on a pile of bin bags by the side of the road.
Well, damn. Suddenly, I'm kind of regretting signing that petition. The video talks about how shocking it was to the passersby, how they got so many people signing their petitions, so I will have to agree that it can be effective, but the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Like the PETA adverts have for years, this is using a woman as a reasonable stand in for an abused animal.
Even worse, the Lush campaign manager is apparently fully aware of how problematic the performance was – she has already faux-pologised in a blog post, in which she explains that nothing other than a woman being abused by a man in a shop window could possibly have accurately represented the systemic abuse in animal testing. The “important, strong, well and thoroughly considered” decision to have an abused woman at the centre of the piece was apparently deliberately made with an awareness of the context in which images of the abuse of women have been used by campaigning groups in the past, which said campaign manager of course entirely condemns, because she sees this one as being different due to there being no intent to titillate or capitalise on the attention it would get due to being a ten-hour display of violence against a woman.
Is this really a case of intent being not-as-fucking-magic as people think? I would challenge that campaign manager to analyse why precisely it made so much sense to carry out the performance in that way – why, for instance, there weren't images of animals instead (surely just as horrific and rather more to the point).
What on earth makes her think that HER campaign makes this acceptable, when she is doing the exact same thing as PETA? And, if a campaign features a man hurting and humiliating a woman for ten hours, is it okay to reap the attention so long as you didn't mean for it to benefit from that? If you don't WANT your art/protest/campaign piece to be seen as part of a wider cultural context in which images of violence against women are are used excessively for advertising and campaigning, does that mean that it shouldn't count?
Well done for being aware of the problems, Lush, but saying that you were aware that it was problematic and then went ahead anyway doesn't get you any brownie points.
Well, I signed the petition, and then investigated a little more. So far as I can tell, the EU has been gradually introducing legislation to prohibit using animal subjects to test for particular reactions to cosmetics. In 2013, the third phase of this is supposed to kick in – though let's be clear: a lot of it has already come into effect. The legislation was agreed in 2003 (though it had been in the works since 1998), and a wide swathe of tests have already been banned. The particulars of the last bit of legislation include prohibiting the import of cosmetics which have been tested on animals and banning the remaining toxicity and carcinogenicity tests.
The outcry from the cosmetics industry, and the basis on which they are appealing for a delay to the legislation, is that there are not viable alternatives for carrying out these tests. This does sound like an almost valid reason for people who aren't strongly committed to animal rights – after all, you can argue that it sounds far more practical for toxicity tests to be carried out on animals, rather than people where the effect of failed trials could be horrific. But this is exactly the same argument that was made in 2003 and 2009 – when other toxicity and irritancy tests were prohibited. The industry has been accused of dragging its feet – after all, there has been a 14 year warning that this will happen. A last minute claim that there are no viable alternatives (but that, maybe, there just might be one by 2017 if you delay the legislation...) sounds like a last attempt to delay standards that they do not want to comply with.
So, after that research, I was pretty happy with having signed that petition. But that wasn't what I wanted to write about. Today, I saw the video of the live performance 'endurance' art [trigger warning for violence and abuse] that Lush put on in a shop window, in which a woman playing an 'animal subject' was put through various tests by scientists, which included restraints, shaving her head, injections, forcing substances into her mouth and which concluded by having her carried out of the shop and placed on a pile of bin bags by the side of the road.
Well, damn. Suddenly, I'm kind of regretting signing that petition. The video talks about how shocking it was to the passersby, how they got so many people signing their petitions, so I will have to agree that it can be effective, but the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Like the PETA adverts have for years, this is using a woman as a reasonable stand in for an abused animal.
Even worse, the Lush campaign manager is apparently fully aware of how problematic the performance was – she has already faux-pologised in a blog post, in which she explains that nothing other than a woman being abused by a man in a shop window could possibly have accurately represented the systemic abuse in animal testing. The “important, strong, well and thoroughly considered” decision to have an abused woman at the centre of the piece was apparently deliberately made with an awareness of the context in which images of the abuse of women have been used by campaigning groups in the past, which said campaign manager of course entirely condemns, because she sees this one as being different due to there being no intent to titillate or capitalise on the attention it would get due to being a ten-hour display of violence against a woman.
Is this really a case of intent being not-as-fucking-magic as people think? I would challenge that campaign manager to analyse why precisely it made so much sense to carry out the performance in that way – why, for instance, there weren't images of animals instead (surely just as horrific and rather more to the point).
What on earth makes her think that HER campaign makes this acceptable, when she is doing the exact same thing as PETA? And, if a campaign features a man hurting and humiliating a woman for ten hours, is it okay to reap the attention so long as you didn't mean for it to benefit from that? If you don't WANT your art/protest/campaign piece to be seen as part of a wider cultural context in which images of violence against women are are used excessively for advertising and campaigning, does that mean that it shouldn't count?
Well done for being aware of the problems, Lush, but saying that you were aware that it was problematic and then went ahead anyway doesn't get you any brownie points.
Sunday, 6 November 2011
Nostalgia
I really intended for this blog to be for more than trans issues - I have links to feminist posts, political theories that I want to comment on, so on and so forth. Yet when it comes down to it, it's generally when I get hit by thoughts that I can't explain so easily that I turn to writing here. I need to improve that habit. But for today, I'm still talking about the trans thing.
Mostly, I'm talking about the nostalgia for the person, or people, that we could have been. Some people will say that they always knew that they identified differently from their assigned gender, for others it is a discovery. For some, including myself, it is a discovery which can make you look back and re-interpret events in your life.
But if you didn't always know that you were/would become a person living outside of cisgender expectations, then the journey to accepting that can include giving up a hell of a lot of dreams and expectations. Maybe having a family in a particular way, or working in a particular job suddenly becomes much farther out of your reach.
A few random examples - I would now be much less safe travelling in a lot of places. While I am lucky enough to live in a place with enough equal opportuinities legislation to be fairly confident that I will not be overtly discriminated against in the job market, unless I start passing and become entirely stealth then it will always be a factor in considering employment. A whole range of fields (including ones that I am particularly interested in) will be much harder to work in.
And...that's hopefully my self-pitying whinge out of the way for the evening. My sudden loss of privilege, it hurts :P
The particular trigger for that was considering my own future employment. You see, I know how to do job interviews presenting as a female. I learned over years how to dress and act, and I could do a reasonable facsimile of that even today (though I might have to engage in some colourful cursing afterwards). How to present as an employable, normative, professional guy, though? I know the body language tips, and the phrases...but they have not had enough time to become natural reactions - and goodness knows I can't seem to find a shirt to fit me decently.
I guess these things will come in time, with practice and assistance from the NHS. But damn, it does make me miss the person who knew how to dress and act appropriately, and the dreams of the future that that person had.
Here endeth the indulgent navel-gazing.
Mostly, I'm talking about the nostalgia for the person, or people, that we could have been. Some people will say that they always knew that they identified differently from their assigned gender, for others it is a discovery. For some, including myself, it is a discovery which can make you look back and re-interpret events in your life.
But if you didn't always know that you were/would become a person living outside of cisgender expectations, then the journey to accepting that can include giving up a hell of a lot of dreams and expectations. Maybe having a family in a particular way, or working in a particular job suddenly becomes much farther out of your reach.
A few random examples - I would now be much less safe travelling in a lot of places. While I am lucky enough to live in a place with enough equal opportuinities legislation to be fairly confident that I will not be overtly discriminated against in the job market, unless I start passing and become entirely stealth then it will always be a factor in considering employment. A whole range of fields (including ones that I am particularly interested in) will be much harder to work in.
And...that's hopefully my self-pitying whinge out of the way for the evening. My sudden loss of privilege, it hurts :P
The particular trigger for that was considering my own future employment. You see, I know how to do job interviews presenting as a female. I learned over years how to dress and act, and I could do a reasonable facsimile of that even today (though I might have to engage in some colourful cursing afterwards). How to present as an employable, normative, professional guy, though? I know the body language tips, and the phrases...but they have not had enough time to become natural reactions - and goodness knows I can't seem to find a shirt to fit me decently.
I guess these things will come in time, with practice and assistance from the NHS. But damn, it does make me miss the person who knew how to dress and act appropriately, and the dreams of the future that that person had.
Here endeth the indulgent navel-gazing.
Thursday, 15 September 2011
On Dysphoria - Part Three
[Please note: in this series, I am discussing only my own experiences of dysphoria. Other trans* people have very different experiences, and one person's cannot be generalised]
So, that body positivity thing? I support it. I really do. No body, regardless of sex, size, age, colour, ability or other feature is less worthy than any other. Nobody should feel shamed for the body that they have, and working towards everyone feeling comfortable in their body is an important goal. But it doesn't follow that everyone should feel comfortable in their body, as some people seem to think.
In fact, as a teenager, I worked hard to be okay with my body. Worried about going out? Paranoid about your appearance? That's okay, it's just typical teenage delusions. You appear to be suffering from misguided low self-esteem. Just convince yourself that everyone else is equally uncomfortable. And it may take you a while, but eventually you'll manage to propel yourself out the door. Most of the time. And if you didn't make it into town when you'd been planning to, I'm sure it was just inherent laziness. After all, people say you look good enough. And you can wear skirts and low-cut tops as a particular 'fuck you' to the world.
That method worked just fine until I found myself independent enough to determine whether or not I went out. In hindsight, university life was never going to work out that well. But that could be put down to laziness of course. It wasn't until I found myself in Canada, half a world away from the people who worried about me, that I actually spoke to someone about how difficult it was to leave my room and we settled on general social anxiety as a diagnosis.
Fast forward another year and I had dscovered the joys of anti-depressants for increasing my confidence in going out, but I still didn't feel quite right. But i still knew that it couldn't be my body which was wrong - it was just my delusions about it. After all, I was young and healthy and had clearly just let idealised images in advertising affect me too much, as so many young people do.
(I had, for the past eight months or so, been considering the idea of binders. Without linking it to being trans or any other issues a part of me seemed quite comfortable with the idea that, at some point, I would be getting one.)
It always makes me blink when people want to let me know that I'm making very serious decisions about my life and should maybe take time to think it over. After all, they weren't in my head when years of growing feminist thought met a sense of self that, frankly, didn't seem to like the idea that much. The only logical response to such a collision was, of course, internalised misogyny! And I'd dealt with this kind of thing for years in a minor way, so I clearly just had to sort out where my internal prejudices were to sort everything out.
Well, that ddn't go too well. Eventually, the deadlock broke, the other way. A bit step towards that was the day that I actually got a binder (still without connecting 'trans' to it - that was far too scary a thought. It was just something that felt right to try out.)
And without stress, without the long moments of panic about being seen, I put it on and stepped outside.
So that body positivity thing needed a little modifying, perhaps. A little bending of principles to allow myself to fail to meet that ridiculous ideal. But I come back to it a lot. My mother, for example, will respond to my talk of surgeries with examples of teenagers undergoing plastic surgery. And while a part of me wants to dismiss that idea entirely, I always end up wondering just how analagous the two experiences are. After all, it's not as if I think a trans guy who has not opted for a medical transition is less of a man. I am fairly confident in saying that that I don't think my own identity is invalidated by my body.
This isn't a universal opinion, I have to say. I know that many trans people do not consider that they can live happily without certain medical modifications to their bodies. But many will also say that their identification is independent of that - the medical intervention does not magically re-create them as men or women, rather, the intervention occurs because they already are such. And honestly, should a non-trans person experience such horror and discomfort regarding their own body, regardless of the cause, I cannot help but want to support them in resolving it however they can.
I guess the element I struggled with is that body positivity is all very well, but it's okay not to like your body as well. There was a size positive activist who recently wrote about how much better she felt after losing weight and many people in the community felt betrayed by that, and said so. Even among self-proclaimed body positive people, there seems to be a policing to make sure that they are positive enough. And it's strangely reminiscent of the divisions that people in the trans* community are trying to get over - between medically transitioned folk and not.
Perhaps it's too fine a balancing act, to support body positivity while allowing space for those who cannot be positive about their own bodies. Maybe it's a dilution of the cause, mixing messages and making us all less effective. Finding a clear path between the conflicting forces and messages of dysphoria, positivity, policing and autonomy is a theoretical puzzle I am clearly not yet equal to.
The most helpful thing to come from this theorising and wondering? The idea that it can be okay to feel bad about about myself. That it is not a failure to yield to societal expectations of what my body should be like. It may not be ideologically pure, but the energy that it took to fight that battle can be put to better use elsewhere.
So, that body positivity thing? I support it. I really do. No body, regardless of sex, size, age, colour, ability or other feature is less worthy than any other. Nobody should feel shamed for the body that they have, and working towards everyone feeling comfortable in their body is an important goal. But it doesn't follow that everyone should feel comfortable in their body, as some people seem to think.
In fact, as a teenager, I worked hard to be okay with my body. Worried about going out? Paranoid about your appearance? That's okay, it's just typical teenage delusions. You appear to be suffering from misguided low self-esteem. Just convince yourself that everyone else is equally uncomfortable. And it may take you a while, but eventually you'll manage to propel yourself out the door. Most of the time. And if you didn't make it into town when you'd been planning to, I'm sure it was just inherent laziness. After all, people say you look good enough. And you can wear skirts and low-cut tops as a particular 'fuck you' to the world.
That method worked just fine until I found myself independent enough to determine whether or not I went out. In hindsight, university life was never going to work out that well. But that could be put down to laziness of course. It wasn't until I found myself in Canada, half a world away from the people who worried about me, that I actually spoke to someone about how difficult it was to leave my room and we settled on general social anxiety as a diagnosis.
Fast forward another year and I had dscovered the joys of anti-depressants for increasing my confidence in going out, but I still didn't feel quite right. But i still knew that it couldn't be my body which was wrong - it was just my delusions about it. After all, I was young and healthy and had clearly just let idealised images in advertising affect me too much, as so many young people do.
(I had, for the past eight months or so, been considering the idea of binders. Without linking it to being trans or any other issues a part of me seemed quite comfortable with the idea that, at some point, I would be getting one.)
It always makes me blink when people want to let me know that I'm making very serious decisions about my life and should maybe take time to think it over. After all, they weren't in my head when years of growing feminist thought met a sense of self that, frankly, didn't seem to like the idea that much. The only logical response to such a collision was, of course, internalised misogyny! And I'd dealt with this kind of thing for years in a minor way, so I clearly just had to sort out where my internal prejudices were to sort everything out.
Well, that ddn't go too well. Eventually, the deadlock broke, the other way. A bit step towards that was the day that I actually got a binder (still without connecting 'trans' to it - that was far too scary a thought. It was just something that felt right to try out.)
And without stress, without the long moments of panic about being seen, I put it on and stepped outside.
So that body positivity thing needed a little modifying, perhaps. A little bending of principles to allow myself to fail to meet that ridiculous ideal. But I come back to it a lot. My mother, for example, will respond to my talk of surgeries with examples of teenagers undergoing plastic surgery. And while a part of me wants to dismiss that idea entirely, I always end up wondering just how analagous the two experiences are. After all, it's not as if I think a trans guy who has not opted for a medical transition is less of a man. I am fairly confident in saying that that I don't think my own identity is invalidated by my body.
This isn't a universal opinion, I have to say. I know that many trans people do not consider that they can live happily without certain medical modifications to their bodies. But many will also say that their identification is independent of that - the medical intervention does not magically re-create them as men or women, rather, the intervention occurs because they already are such. And honestly, should a non-trans person experience such horror and discomfort regarding their own body, regardless of the cause, I cannot help but want to support them in resolving it however they can.
I guess the element I struggled with is that body positivity is all very well, but it's okay not to like your body as well. There was a size positive activist who recently wrote about how much better she felt after losing weight and many people in the community felt betrayed by that, and said so. Even among self-proclaimed body positive people, there seems to be a policing to make sure that they are positive enough. And it's strangely reminiscent of the divisions that people in the trans* community are trying to get over - between medically transitioned folk and not.
Perhaps it's too fine a balancing act, to support body positivity while allowing space for those who cannot be positive about their own bodies. Maybe it's a dilution of the cause, mixing messages and making us all less effective. Finding a clear path between the conflicting forces and messages of dysphoria, positivity, policing and autonomy is a theoretical puzzle I am clearly not yet equal to.
The most helpful thing to come from this theorising and wondering? The idea that it can be okay to feel bad about about myself. That it is not a failure to yield to societal expectations of what my body should be like. It may not be ideologically pure, but the energy that it took to fight that battle can be put to better use elsewhere.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
On Dysphoria - Part Two
Typically, after posting part one of this series, I've started a period of really struggling with dysphoria again. So rather than a nostalgic look at gradually becoming more and more uncomfortable with myself, I'm really only capable of thinking about how it's hitting me right now.
I have groups of people that I'm more or less comfortable with, depending. On a good day, I wear my binder when I'm in public and until it becomes uncomfortable, and drink lots of peppermint tea on those days that I miscalculate how long I will be around people. Housemates, ex-housemates, metamours and my partner count as one strange extended family that I can stand to be around without binding (which is useful, since otherwise I would be damaging my health far more than I already do). And on a good day, I can forget about it.
On a bad day, I can't forget. Sometimes my body protests, and I choose between physical pain and not socialising. Other times the binder isn't enough, and I'll spend time hating my voice or hips for the way they are. At times, I'll look at friends or acquaintances and feel nothing but envy for their body. I've seen one person describe their experience of dysphoria as the 'Ah Shit!' moment of seeing a person and longing for that ease or those physical features. I think of it as a moment of vertigo, the ground dropping away beneath my feet.
Those are the days that I'll bind for twenty hours and make myself ill, the days that I will be struck by discomfort mid-conversation and have to escape to my room, the nights I'll stay fully dressed until under the covers with the lights off. And I'm never sure what triggers it. Possibly it's just being tired or stressed in my day to day life, maybe I've run out of the mental resources to ignore or reimagine my body as fiercely as I usually do.
This weekend I found myself in a situation - due to long hours - where I had no choice but to socialise without my binder, and it took me forty-five minutes to leave my room. Not because I was concerned about the people I was with, or felt unsafe in any way. Just because there was an irrational terror and unwillingness to be around them while being so wrong. I got over it in time to go out and have fun, and I'm glad I did, but it was anxiety on a level I've not experienced since before I started binding.
And where the hell does that leave a body positive feminist? I mean, really, what right do I have to even try and claim that kind of philosophy when I'm working towards hormonal and surgical alteration of my own body just so I can face people?
I have groups of people that I'm more or less comfortable with, depending. On a good day, I wear my binder when I'm in public and until it becomes uncomfortable, and drink lots of peppermint tea on those days that I miscalculate how long I will be around people. Housemates, ex-housemates, metamours and my partner count as one strange extended family that I can stand to be around without binding (which is useful, since otherwise I would be damaging my health far more than I already do). And on a good day, I can forget about it.
On a bad day, I can't forget. Sometimes my body protests, and I choose between physical pain and not socialising. Other times the binder isn't enough, and I'll spend time hating my voice or hips for the way they are. At times, I'll look at friends or acquaintances and feel nothing but envy for their body. I've seen one person describe their experience of dysphoria as the 'Ah Shit!' moment of seeing a person and longing for that ease or those physical features. I think of it as a moment of vertigo, the ground dropping away beneath my feet.
Those are the days that I'll bind for twenty hours and make myself ill, the days that I will be struck by discomfort mid-conversation and have to escape to my room, the nights I'll stay fully dressed until under the covers with the lights off. And I'm never sure what triggers it. Possibly it's just being tired or stressed in my day to day life, maybe I've run out of the mental resources to ignore or reimagine my body as fiercely as I usually do.
This weekend I found myself in a situation - due to long hours - where I had no choice but to socialise without my binder, and it took me forty-five minutes to leave my room. Not because I was concerned about the people I was with, or felt unsafe in any way. Just because there was an irrational terror and unwillingness to be around them while being so wrong. I got over it in time to go out and have fun, and I'm glad I did, but it was anxiety on a level I've not experienced since before I started binding.
And where the hell does that leave a body positive feminist? I mean, really, what right do I have to even try and claim that kind of philosophy when I'm working towards hormonal and surgical alteration of my own body just so I can face people?
Monday, 29 August 2011
Time - 15.5 hours
Tomorrow, I have a doctor's appointment. It's an appointment I have been trying to get for the past three years, and been looking forward to since January. When I heard about it, I booked the day off from work, phoned my family and told my friends. I drank to it at symbl.
I'm really fucking terrified.
I realise that there's no need to be, of course. I am just finally, roughly three years after first asking, going to see somebody who can talk about gender issues. Of course, in that time, my need for someone to talk to has sort of diminished. I had counsellor after counsellor, until I got the counsellor who refused to talk about my identity at all but suggested that he teach me coping techhniques to better hide the effect that the issues were having on my life. I had anti-depressants for a while, then I didn't, then I did again (and thank gods I did, since it was about six months after I went to the GP with severe depression that I got to see a counsellor). I've spent those years finishing a degree, job hunting and working. I've been role-playing and reading philosophy books. I've moved house four times and started and ended relationships.
And I've been reading about gender. Thinking about gender. Talking (or strenuously avoiding talking) about gender issues. Learning about trans issues. I don't think that a single day has passed without me thinking about it, whether it's cajoling myself into going outside or getting frustrated that I didn't correct someone's pronoun use AGAIN (really, I am very bad at that). I sometimes look back and wonder how I managed to get anything else done with this huge obsession taking over my life (my degree? Sheer luck and the determination of my partner at the time).
At this point, when I'm out as trans to friends, to family and to work, there's not much that I need to relate to them. Yes, there are parts of my life which are really difficult, and they have been difficult for a long time. And this is how I cope with them, and this is how I need to not have to cope any more. A lot of the terror and pain has been and gone - I couldn't keep it up for that long (hur hur). I have a job, I'm headed back to uni, in fact to all intents and purposes I have a stable, functioning life. A model of social transitioning. And just when I think that, I start to worry that I am far too competent and they will see that I clearly am coping so well that I don't need their support. I used to have this devil's bargain with my GP, who wanted me to be so upset and depressed that I clearly needed anti-depressants, but calm and capable enough to be trusted with them. He generally agreed to the prescription after I started crying. So I can see where this fear comes from, but it doesn't stop me tying myself in knots about tomorrow.
Fuuuuuuuuuck.
I'm really fucking terrified.
I realise that there's no need to be, of course. I am just finally, roughly three years after first asking, going to see somebody who can talk about gender issues. Of course, in that time, my need for someone to talk to has sort of diminished. I had counsellor after counsellor, until I got the counsellor who refused to talk about my identity at all but suggested that he teach me coping techhniques to better hide the effect that the issues were having on my life. I had anti-depressants for a while, then I didn't, then I did again (and thank gods I did, since it was about six months after I went to the GP with severe depression that I got to see a counsellor). I've spent those years finishing a degree, job hunting and working. I've been role-playing and reading philosophy books. I've moved house four times and started and ended relationships.
And I've been reading about gender. Thinking about gender. Talking (or strenuously avoiding talking) about gender issues. Learning about trans issues. I don't think that a single day has passed without me thinking about it, whether it's cajoling myself into going outside or getting frustrated that I didn't correct someone's pronoun use AGAIN (really, I am very bad at that). I sometimes look back and wonder how I managed to get anything else done with this huge obsession taking over my life (my degree? Sheer luck and the determination of my partner at the time).
At this point, when I'm out as trans to friends, to family and to work, there's not much that I need to relate to them. Yes, there are parts of my life which are really difficult, and they have been difficult for a long time. And this is how I cope with them, and this is how I need to not have to cope any more. A lot of the terror and pain has been and gone - I couldn't keep it up for that long (hur hur). I have a job, I'm headed back to uni, in fact to all intents and purposes I have a stable, functioning life. A model of social transitioning. And just when I think that, I start to worry that I am far too competent and they will see that I clearly am coping so well that I don't need their support. I used to have this devil's bargain with my GP, who wanted me to be so upset and depressed that I clearly needed anti-depressants, but calm and capable enough to be trusted with them. He generally agreed to the prescription after I started crying. So I can see where this fear comes from, but it doesn't stop me tying myself in knots about tomorrow.
Fuuuuuuuuuck.
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
On Dysphoria - Part 1
Occasionally, my otherwise diverse blogroll (what, you don't call my collection of politics, queer politics, queer culture and feminist politics diverse?) comes together in a strange synchronicity of posts around a particular subject. Today, that happened to be around dysphoria.
Dysphoria is a terribly technical word, which is used in a couple of ways in relation to trans* people. The internet tells me that it specifically means "an unease or dissatisfaction with circumstances" and "gender dysphoria" is one of the medical terms applied to people I prefer to think of as magically gendered. There is also a term - dysmorphia - for a psychological condition in which a person dislikes or is concerned about one or more of their physical features. In some cases, I've seen people refer to 'gender dysmorphia' when talking about trans* people's discomfort with parts of their anatomy but generally dysphoria is used instead, possibly because there is a specific identified underlying cause.
In less medically precise circles (and in my own usage), 'dysphoria' is an umbrella term which covers the wide-ranging issues - anxiety, depression, body issues, general squick - around being trans and walking around with a body which doesn't quite seem to fit. There are both internal and external aspects to this. Internally, there is the sense of my body not being appropriate for the things I want to do with it and the discomfort of the mismatch with my own mental image of my self. Externally, there are all the issues caused by interacting with the world, and the way that people generally interpret the gender cues of my body and mannerisms (let's face it, I'm effeminate as hell). Basically - one set of issues make me uncomfortable when I'm on my own, the other makes me uncomfortable with other people. Sometimes (frequently) I just can't win.
But I still feel a bit strange identifying my reactions as 'dysphoria'. Possibly it is due to the pathologising effect of the word - as if it's not enough that I feel uncomfortable, but that discomfort must also be categorised and remembered and filed away for proof that I am trans enough. Maybe if I get enough dysphoria points I can send away for free hormones? Or a badge?
F was certainly fast enough in being able to point out the areas in which my reactions are consistently gender-related discomfort (though while applying the term to my experiences, she tends to use the less ominous 'body squick' herself). Maybe it's a result of how slowly and unsteadily I acquired my dysphoria that I tend to only really notice it in hindsight.
For all the potential problems around the concept of 'dysphoria' - the pathologisation of my reactions and the way that they can be used as a yardstick against ridiculous standards - the term is helpful in explaining my reactions to myself, at least. I come across discussions online about levels of dysphoria, methods of dealing with it, ways to play it up to make a medical professional actually pay attention...but not very much about the experience of it, the way it changes shape over time or the way people's relationship with it as a concept. It is framed as a reaction - a way of interacting with a body and with the world. If I am going to use it as an explanation though I would rather consider it as a thing in-itself, which has come into the world and affects my relationships and which I can get to know and interact with in a multitude of ways.
I think that it is only by treating the 'reaction' as an entity in itself that it becomes something which can be studied, the origins examined and - hopefully - a level of comfort with it can be reached.
Dysphoria is a terribly technical word, which is used in a couple of ways in relation to trans* people. The internet tells me that it specifically means "an unease or dissatisfaction with circumstances" and "gender dysphoria" is one of the medical terms applied to people I prefer to think of as magically gendered. There is also a term - dysmorphia - for a psychological condition in which a person dislikes or is concerned about one or more of their physical features. In some cases, I've seen people refer to 'gender dysmorphia' when talking about trans* people's discomfort with parts of their anatomy but generally dysphoria is used instead, possibly because there is a specific identified underlying cause.
In less medically precise circles (and in my own usage), 'dysphoria' is an umbrella term which covers the wide-ranging issues - anxiety, depression, body issues, general squick - around being trans and walking around with a body which doesn't quite seem to fit. There are both internal and external aspects to this. Internally, there is the sense of my body not being appropriate for the things I want to do with it and the discomfort of the mismatch with my own mental image of my self. Externally, there are all the issues caused by interacting with the world, and the way that people generally interpret the gender cues of my body and mannerisms (let's face it, I'm effeminate as hell). Basically - one set of issues make me uncomfortable when I'm on my own, the other makes me uncomfortable with other people. Sometimes (frequently) I just can't win.
But I still feel a bit strange identifying my reactions as 'dysphoria'. Possibly it is due to the pathologising effect of the word - as if it's not enough that I feel uncomfortable, but that discomfort must also be categorised and remembered and filed away for proof that I am trans enough. Maybe if I get enough dysphoria points I can send away for free hormones? Or a badge?
F was certainly fast enough in being able to point out the areas in which my reactions are consistently gender-related discomfort (though while applying the term to my experiences, she tends to use the less ominous 'body squick' herself). Maybe it's a result of how slowly and unsteadily I acquired my dysphoria that I tend to only really notice it in hindsight.
For all the potential problems around the concept of 'dysphoria' - the pathologisation of my reactions and the way that they can be used as a yardstick against ridiculous standards - the term is helpful in explaining my reactions to myself, at least. I come across discussions online about levels of dysphoria, methods of dealing with it, ways to play it up to make a medical professional actually pay attention...but not very much about the experience of it, the way it changes shape over time or the way people's relationship with it as a concept. It is framed as a reaction - a way of interacting with a body and with the world. If I am going to use it as an explanation though I would rather consider it as a thing in-itself, which has come into the world and affects my relationships and which I can get to know and interact with in a multitude of ways.
I think that it is only by treating the 'reaction' as an entity in itself that it becomes something which can be studied, the origins examined and - hopefully - a level of comfort with it can be reached.
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