La Raza Heritage Month: Stereotyping

Lone Star was a good movie, but there was a really awkward sex scene. 

I think there was a good reason it was so awkward, but that's a major spoiler so I will put it down at the bottom of the post. The possibility of it making sense came much later though, so while I was watching it, it was just "That's not sexy."

I would have remembered that anyway, but what drove it home was reading a reference to a review of the movie referring to the "sultry" Elisabeth Peña, noting that there is nothing sultry about Peña's performance.

(I believe this refers to a review from Janet Maslin referenced in De Colores Means All of Us.)

If I had not recently viewed the movie, I would have read the reference and agreed that sounded kind of racist. Having just seen the movie, what were they thinking?

It's a great performance. Pilar is a relatively young widow with two children (with one whose grief is turning into rebellion), a difficult mother, and heavy job responsibilities in the school system where white parents push back on the representation that makes sense for the many students of color. It is her time in a meeting that may give the best idea of life on the border.

She navigates all of this responsibility with dignity, a wry humor, and the needed diplomacy, and you never lose sight of how tiring it must be, even as you admire that she keeps going.

Add to that the awkward sex scene, and the only way we are getting "sultry" out of that is if you assume it should be there because she is Latina.

Let me add to this a quote I saved out of Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies:

… from traditional Mexican views such as those espoused by Octavio Paz, who claims in The Labyrinth of Solitude that pachucos were inauthentic Mexicans. (p. 59)

Also add to that reading about disagreements about who could be Chicano or be allowed in MeCha and conflicts between pro-union and pro-environment activists... we shouldn't be fighting and gatekeeping each other.

I'm sure there are places where it makes sense to draw boundaries. If those boundaries are based on how someone in a certain class should be, or a way of looking down at others, then that seems bound to cause harm.

To avoid straying too far out of my lane, let me give personal examples. I am white, but I am also a woman, fat, and kind of poor (though there are different levels and in some ways I am very fortunate).

Of course it would be very easy for me to feel a sense of superiority to women of color and try and exert authority over them, perhaps by playing a victim whom men of color feel bound to defend; white women are notorious for that.

What I am referring to, though, is something perhaps less obvious, 

It could be very easy for me to look down on other women, judging their choices and assuming mine are better. This frequently comes up as "not like other girls" or disputes between "crunchy" versus "silky" moms, or "boy moms" against any other woman who might take her son or give birth to a daughter who takes her son.

(Sounds like she would be happier if her son were gay, but somehow, no.)

It could be very easy for me to believe that my economic status is simply bad luck, but that other people messed up, and I am not really one of those people. I do see how the system has worked against me, but it is abundantly clear that I am not unique in that way.

I could easily do the same thing with my weight, virtuously working to limit caloric intake and maximize activity, and judging anyone I happen to catch eating or resting. 

This type of attitude requires that the judgment on my marginalized group is just, but that I am the exception. I might even find people in the dominant group who would agree that I am not like the others, and possibly handsomely compensate me for assisting with their oppression.

Whatever satisfaction might come with that, I would be degrading myself. I would have this growing frustration as my exceptionalness did not pay off enough. I would be making the world a worse place.

I promise there would not be reliable loyalty from those I assisted.

We should be who we are in our own way. Ideally that will involve kindness, integrity, and self-examination. We might find excellent ways of inhabiting those identities, but they will still not justify trying to coerce others to follow our model.

There are enough people doing that.

And now... SPOILER ALERT!

*************************************************

It makes more sense that the love scene was so awkward when we find out that the reason their parents separated teenage Pilar and Sam was not mere racism or classism or being overly controlling, but because those parents knew that Pilar and Sam were half siblings, thus explaining that deep sense of connection they felt.

Disturbingly, once they both know they decide to keep dating, but not have children together.

It did strike me as weird, but I believe it was supposed to act as an allegory for this Texas-Mexico border relationship with a common parentage, that it is weird but it exists and is not going away, so a way needs to be found to deal with it.

All along the way

It may have felt like a weird direction to go when -- in talking about feelings of peace and security -- I suddenly turned to apocalypse and house fire.

My background with years of concentration on emergency preparedness makes me likely to think about worst case scenarios anyway, but also, I have had some pretty big losses of data.

While I have a few times lost physical notes, most of my data losses have been electronic files. That has included photos, journals, screenplays, novels, and pretty much every other writing project I've ever done, as well as some notes that I had saved for future projects.

Sadly, I am still not that great about backing up data.

For some things it just ended up being okay that they were gone. I don't generally go back to old journals. The experience of going through and writing them is very important, but then I have had the experience.

That is kind of true of the photos also, except that maintaining the travel blog has also become an important part of the process. Blogging about travel makes me to go through and look over the photos critically for which ones I like best and which ones are most representative of the place. Then the blog becomes an additional record I can share. Again, a terrible apocalypse or massive server destruction might wipe them out, but I will still have had the experience of the travel and processing of the travel into a shareable form.

The internet has served as a backup for many of the other projects . The 6 page screenplays and the comic script can be found on various sites. Some short fiction has been preserved on the blog. My self-published novels can still be found on Amazon, and I could still log in and print copies if I wanted to.

The two sequels (one in each series) that I started are gone, along with all of the screenplays except one that I happened to have attached to an e-mail. 

That was a worse loss. It felt like there was no point in writing again. 

Not long after that computer crash, someone asked me if I had been writing. I said I hadn't, meaning working on anything for sale, even though there still had been some blogging and journal writing.

It was harder to admit,  because it was someone who was always telling me I was such a great writer. I had to grapple with what part of my identity that was going to be. Here's where I landed:

I don't regret anything that I have written. Those experiences, and the knowledge and feelings they unlocked were important for me. I have experienced flow writing them. I can still slip into those worlds sometimes.

It is not how I am going to make a living. In fact, when I was trying to write for profit I wrote worse, because it hurried me and added anxiety.

Maybe part of my absolute hatred of asking for money is that if I am producing something that transmits knowledge well or helps shed clarity, I don't want to charge for that. 

Maybe that is why the computer had to crash; because the fact that I was getting nowhere financially wasn't obvious enough to permanently dash my hopes. Maybe it was a hard lesson that was needed.

I don't regret that I have written.

Some of them have moments where they touched people who needed them. Since a lot of them still reside out there on the web, maybe they will do some good again.

Right now, blogging is important for me. 

I believe I will eventually write books again.

It seems more likely that they will be non-fiction, and quite clear that they will not be a source of income.

That is fine, as long as I have some kind of income. 

Beyond that, there is a lot I don't know. I know some things to work on right now, and then I believe the rest will follow.

There is one more way in which I am thinking about worst-case scenarios. One more post, and then I believe I will change the subject.

La Raza Heritage Month: The Books

I included the original publication dates for each book read, because without planning a lot of it ended up being from the '90s.

I guess I started to notice when an essay on gendered work referenced the artwork of Carmen Lomas Garza. I recognized her style from remember Tamalada. 

While it would have made sense if I had seen it in a Spanish class, I think I saw it in a cooking article.

It is a painting of a large extended family all working together to make tamales. It made a big impression on me. I know someone whose extended Italian family makes multiple batches of ravioli and freezes them once a year. I have participated in a mass egg roll making session with a Laotian family. Maybe every culture has that one work party food?

As it is, looking through the books I see there was also a mass empanada making session, though that happened at her aunt and uncle's house. Maybe it depends on how many foods your family likes that are labor-intensive.

There was no intention to focus on this time period, and yet it made sense that it happened. This was a time when multicultural studies were growing and getting more attention, but I did not know how new it was. 

Earlier when I read about Cesar Chavez, I had not realized he died in 1993. He seemed much more in the past. The big thing I heard about -- the grape boycott -- was from before I was born, but he was still active and union rights were still important well into my lifetime.

On a completely unrelated note, I recently watched an episode of Qunicy M.E. where a doctor allows babies with Down Syndrome to die. This particular child had digestive issues, where surgery would have been necessary for feeding to even be possible, but the surgery wasn't done and IV feeding wasn't done and the child died.

That episode was from 1982.

I don't remember living in a world where that was possible. I went to school with people who had siblings with Down Syndrome who were totally part of the family, my sisters helped with a Special Olympics event, we saw other families on television, I saw "Welcome to Holland" in Dear Abby so many times...

It is the first time that I have wondered if maybe there should have been more people with Down Syndrome around. Did some maybe die or were they locked away? Because that's one way the doctor who allowed the death justified it; if they don't die, they just grow into terrible burdens we lock away!

The episode is seriously disturbing. It also has some outdated language that can make you cringe, but that is almost minor because there is a dead child.

Television is not perfect, but it can help us look back.

Certainly it is a reminder of privilege that just because you have not had a problem cannot take for granted that no one else has. 

Perhaps more importantly, changes don't inevitably happen. It takes people marching, organizing, writing letters, sharing their stories, and a multitude of other activities, repeated, often under great frustration.

Don't take them for granted.

Back to the reading list, I really liked Martin Espada and will definitely read more by him. 

It made me happy to find the rest of Lomas Garza's work.

Otherwise, the most recommended are probably De Colores and Fifth Sun. 

The other non-fiction books were a bit too pedantic, though they made valid points about groups with goals in common sometimes fighting against each other and needing to grow beyond that.

Picture Books:

Broken Butterfly Wings by Raquel M. Ortiz, illustrated by Carrie Salazar, 2021
Family Pictures/Cuadros De Familia by Carmen Lomas Garza, 1990
In My Family/En Mi Familia by Carmen Lomas Garza, 1996 

Poetry:

Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing Up Hispanic in the United States, edited by Lori M. Carlson, 1994
Zapata's Disciple by Martin Espada, 1998
Floaters by Martin Espada, 2021

Prose/Non-fiction

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century by Elizabeth Martinez, 1998
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend, 2019
The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture by Neil Foley, 1997
Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies by José David Saldivar, 1997

Winnowing through

Last week I wrote about gaining understanding about the conflicts I had with my mother. 

One of the big ones was the neatness of my room. It was not dirty, but it was cluttered; there were always stacks of books and papers and drawings. Sometimes I wasn't done with them yet, and sometimes, maybe I only thought I was done. What if I needed them later?

When I was born, we were pretty poor, and it was a time of grief. I think I have had this scarcity mindset from before conscious memory. Maybe that's why there was always a worry about needing something and not having it.

It was not always strictly that concern. 

Sometimes it was wanting to cover everything. I started a pretty serious needlepoint phase in high school, possibly related to working at K-Mart and discovering so many needlepoint kits. I wanted to do them all. I did many, but I still have a lot left. Eventually I did not have the time to work on them anymore. 

(I was still doing at least some in college, so that took a while.)

There there was building my imagined future, so I had a hope chest. K-Mart was a big part of this too, because I could find great deals on things there, and put them in the chest that I also bought there. 

Many of those things eventually became gifts, and some ended up being used by me, but setting up this dream home after I got married never happened. Having some drinking glasses and towels and a few appliances wouldn't have made that much difference anyway.

The biggest source of clutter was probably the desire for information, which for me is pretty much insatiable.

I have an old hymnbook because it has "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" in it. I like the song and it is not in our current hymnbook. I wanted to remember the words.

I got that book in the early 90s. Now an internet search will quickly resolves the lyric question, though there's this middle verse coming up that I swear whoever posted it just made up.

When I was a teenager, knowing song lyrics required listening over and over again, unless they were on the liner notes, which did not happen enough. 

I have saved a lot of college textbooks. One of them is specifically a book on Roman history that briefly mentions the sister of one Roman emperor proposing to Attila the Hun to get out of an unwanted arranged marriage. Dramatic! There weren't many details, but I at least wanted to be able to remember her name.

Without remembering it on my own, if you type "emperor's sister Attila the Hun" into any decent search engine, you come up with Justa Grata Honoria.

I'm not saying that you always get great results with search engines, especially with lyrics (and especially with monetized search engine optimization), but there are options now that are amazing. 

I still want to keep the same kind of information that I always have, but it does not require an extensive personal library.

Yes, sometimes I return a book to the library, and then want to verify something that was in it. I may be able to find it online, or remember it well enough, or if needed I can check the book out again. 

There is a great calmness in that, and it allows me to downsize. I still care about not wasting, so I will try and find good places for everything, but that is a significant project for this phase of my life.

Of course, I  have to consider if that is secure enough. In some apocalyptic scenario, the internet could be wiped out. A house fire could wipe out the personal library.

In fact, I have lost incredible amounts of data before. 

That must be the next section.

La Raza Heritage Month: Movies

I watched four more movies from the list suggested by Michael Paarlberg:

https://twitter.com/MPaarlberg/status/1560397489156624384

That leaves me with six. It would be nice to think I could finish them next year, but sometimes locating them is difficult.

Also, there was one surprise addition.  

Here are the films I watched, listed from most recent to oldest. This is also almost the order I watched them in, which was mainly a coincidence. The change to that would be to put Lone Star second.

La Dictadura Perfecta (2014) (Mexico)

I was never able to find a subtitled version, but I did find a dubbed one on Netflix. It's not my favorite way of watching anything, but it worked out.

This is a dark comedy focusing on news and government corruption, which are shockingly aligned. Maybe the strongest message of all is how easy it is to end up dead.

Tropa de Elite 2: O Inimiga Agora e Outro (2010) (Brazil)

Terrible corruption and violence again, but with less humor. This time it is set in Brazil, where I know the least history and have the least language comprehension. I suspect that in the setting of Rio de Janeiro, the large population also has an impact. The setup of the favelas certainly does.

Perhaps the most interesting part is Nascimento, a devoted cop, having to learn to work with teacher and politician (and husband of Nascimento's ex) Fraga, coming to respect someone who has seemed to be a natural enemy.

Tropico de Sangre (2010) (Dominican Republic)

For this one, I have read In the Time of the Butterflies, so had some familiarity with the Mirabal sisters and their story. The film differed in that it focused much more on Minerva. Also, where the book focused more on their interior lives and relationships, in the film you saw more of the organizing they did, the torture they experienced, and difficult to forget images of their deaths.

For getting an idea of the background of the country, you see how the need to placate Trujillo keeps encroaching on freedom and life, not just for the Mirabal family but for everyone, even his friends and supporters. That arc with Antonio de la Maza is important for understanding Trujillo's eventual end.

The torture is not shown in great detail, but what you do understand makes a strong impression, making the movie effective. I also appreciated Trujillo's pallor. He just keeps looking more monstrous every time you see him.

There is a film specifically based on In the Time of the Butterflies, and that will be interesting for comparison.

Lone Star (1996) (border)

This is the one where I most understood how it gave you the feel for understanding the area. With the different people featured and their interactions, yes, that makes sense for how being right on the border would be.

The timing of my watching it also worked well with some of my reading, so that was a nice bonus.

Born in East L.A. (1987)

Shockingly, this is the one that was not recommended by the college professor.

When I was picking the daily songs for the month, and focusing on regions, I kept thinking about Los Angeles, and I kept thinking of the song. I knew there was a movie, and decided to just go for it.

Like many movies done by people who have worked in sketch comedy, sometimes it is uneven, and there are probably scenes that are unnecessary, though some of them are very memorable. I did not really appreciate the scenes with Feo, which was a shame to me because I am really fond of Tony Plana (who was also in Lone Star).

I must nonetheless concede that the sequence going over the hill to Neil Diamond's "America" was set up perfectly and really pays off.

Letting go

The e-mail backlog and the procrastination and everything is part of a broader story of gaining peace. I think the reason I was having so much trouble telling it is that I was trying to gloss over the pain on that path.

If I am no longer afraid of various losses, that was mostly achieved by having major losses and then surviving them. Maybe that means they weren't devastating, but there were definite feelings. I think I need to face that part head on. Maybe the easiest way to do that is going over the one that does still hurt, and that is still happening.

It hurts that I am losing my mother, and have been doing so for years. I don't even know when to start counting; there have been so many stages.

The first thing that I need to acknowledge is that she seems really pretty happy and peaceful.

She had been pretty cheerful most of the time, but there were moments where she would get really emotional. Sometimes it felt like she was working things out. Even if the way she presented them had not been how it really happened, emotionally it seemed to be part of a larger truth. Now she seems more peaceful, but is also slowing down a lot. 

I know there are ways in which we have been really blessed; this could have been much harder. 

It's been hard enough.

So, I have that mourning for the past decade or so, and the absence of that relationship with a lot of reminders of it, and this sense of impending finality, and I am depressed.

This is actually my standard version of depression. There have been two periods in my life that were much more acute. Currently, I just feel kind of held down. I am very functional, but the sense of loss is very present. I don't think I can move past it until she goes, and that moving past is probably not going to be immediate.

I am really grateful that I was able to make peace with the flaws in our relationship. I carried a lot of guilt for my dissatisfaction for her, like I wasn't a good enough daughter if her method of parenting was not enough for me. 

Gaining that perspective on what was missing and why was a huge weight lifted. 

It also left me able to be more understanding of ways in which I could have been a better child, and to make peace with that as well. For the most part we liked each other, and we loved each other fiercely, and that's pretty good.

And I wholeheartedly believe this is not a permanent loss. One day the pain will be gone, and the love will still be there, and that will be joyful.

Right now this holiday season does kind of suck. 

It doesn't mean I won't enjoy anything, and it definitely doesn't mean that anyone should try and cheer me up. 

It just is.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-next-mourning.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/10/what-mr-rogers-said.html

Transgender Awareness Reading: Until next time...

I cannot rule out that I may do a post about how some books read went along with other issues in other books read at around the same times, but specifically for transgender issues I am moving on.

It should come as no surprise that I did not completely meet my goals for this reading section.

Yes, I did read all of the books I meant to, but there had been some other things that I wanted to spend more time on. 

This takes us back in time to the first time I took a comic book MOOC: Gender Through Comic Books

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/05/gender-through-comic-books-my-first-mooc.html

Transgender issues were only a small part of the reading, because we also talked about stereotypes and perceptions, but there was some relevant material that stuck with me. 

That included the story of the Guevedoces in the Dominican Republic, though I had not remembered or understood at the time that they enzyme deficiency was genetic. I had thought it related to nutrition. Maybe some of that is better understood now, or I just might have missed it.

I also remembered an Indonesian group that recognized five genders, the Bugis. I think it was after the class that I saw something about seven genders in Judaism, except when I try to find that now I come up with six or eight, so maybe someone took an average. 

Anyway, I wanted to delve into those more, and how people relate to gender in general. I know the white supremacist way that infuses Western civilization, but it has definite flaws.

I did not end up really doing that. I am of course behind on other reading, which is sort of standard for me now. It felt like I should be moving on, but was it enough?

There are a few things that are reassuring.

First of all, there is one thing I keep remembering about that first MOOC.

One night on Twitter there was a young person expression frustration with gender, not feeling like they conformed, but maybe not feeling transgender either... like they just didn't match up.

I don't know that I was even familiar with the term "non-binary" then, and I don't know if that ended up being their answer. Sometimes, maybe the reason you don't feel like a "girl" is that there are two many qualifications put on what girls should be.

I was able to direct her to some of the materials I knew from the course, and it really helped.

About two years ago I was able to help someone else who had concluded that they were non-binary, but then started enjoying girly things, and felt a little weird about it. I had the most specific dream imaginable to reach out to her.

I mention them because I do know that you don't have to know everything to be able to help (fortunately), and that this matters, but also that there is guidance.

I feel better moving on now because I already have a plan for June 2024. 

I will commemorate Pride Month with at least five books and researching two other people. That reading list came together really easily and naturally from where I already was.

Maybe I will get into looking at cross-cultural gender comprehension then. 

Finally -- and this goes more to the guidance part -- the past couple of days I could not stop thinking about this actress who had a very limited run on the soap opera Loving back in 1992. I don't think I even saw that many episodes with her, and I could not remember the name of the character or the actress. 

Fortunately, her character had dated Roger Howarth's character, and he became incredibly popular in another role. The internet eventually delivered Staige Prince, played by Eden Atwood. 

She hasn't even done that much acting. She did, however, start the Interface Project, where people with intersex conditions can share their stories.

https://www.interfaceproject.org/

That has been an area where I really feel uninformed. This feels like a good starting point, and it would be so random a way to get that, but I don't think it's random. 

Things like that help me feel all right about my path, and my pace.

Related posts: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/10/terf-month.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/11/whatever-joanne.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/11/transgender-awareness-reading.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/11/transgender-awareness-reading-memoirs.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/12/transgender-awareness-reading-for.html

Lost health

I expected the old e-mail messages thing to be simply an interesting time marker; this is what's happened with Twitter over the past year, and moving on!

I keep not moving on. 

In the strata of the e-mail backlog I keep finding other things about myself, some that I have even written about already, but am apparently not done with. In various ways, it tends to focus on loss.

I have also recently undergone a new experience, but I suppose it all relates: yesterday I tested positive for Covid.

I have given some details on Facebook, but let me back up. 

This is the first case in my household of my two younger sisters and I. Two of us mostly telecommute, which helps. It was the one who has to work on site that brought it home.

We have still escaped it for almost four years now, but my sisters were being more careless with masking. The contagion happening right after Thanksgiving is not a coincidence; plan on increased risk through the New Year. People want to do things, I get it.

I also get that the mask is not fun. Wearing it around home, I notice that my nose itches a lot. I wear it anyway, but I was not wearing it at home while Maria was incubating.

Despite my efforts to be responsible in not easily catching or spreading disease, I was probably irresponsible in testing.

Maria got bad chills on Tuesday. She took her temperature and saw that she had a fever, so took an antigen test that came out positive. She left work and called to let us know on the way.

We immediately started masking and distancing. It's not perfect. Some people have basements or attics and can really isolate. We only have a crawlspace and it would have been cruel to put her down there. Julie and I were not testing, but we were taking our temperatures. We planned on testing if we got symptoms, including fevers. Then, after Maria's first negative test I wanted to test, and then two days later. If those were both negative, I would have considered myself in the clear.

Sunday Maria was negative, so Julie and I both took our first tests. Julie was negative, but I wasn't.

People have been great, but I felt a twinge when getting recommendations to take Paxlovid.

Maria had a video appointment the day after she tested positive, and her PA recommended against it. The reasons given were that Maria's health was overall good, and the PA said that with Paxlovid people tend to get really bad diarrhea and then catch Covid again a couple of weeks later. 

Internet research (not a perfect system) seems to bear out that Covid rebound is a thing with Paxlovid, but diarrhea seems to be more of a Covid thing than a Paxlovid thing. I would take that with a grain of salt. My real issue is that I suspect I had it earlier than I thought. 

That made me feel that I was irresponsible in waiting to test. The problem was, we didn't have that many left. I have ordered more free tests, and we bought more too, but we did not feel free to just keep testing. If I had at least tested on Friday, I could have gotten a hold of my doctor.

Of course I didn't have the fever, but did I have symptoms?

Well, I work in a call center for Medicare plans and it's open enrollment. High call volume always makes my throat raw, and this is the busiest time of year. So, some coughing and sore throat did not stand out. When the calls keep coming, with no time to think in between and then the tools slow down because everyone is using them and I really care and often I can really help but then there are old people who are really lonely or cranky... I start getting this rage building up inside me. Then, my brain is fried by the end of the shift where I can't really read or be social, but it is still too worked up to fall asleep easily.

When your baseline is exhausted, hoarse, and constantly suppressing urges to scream and cry and run away, maybe checking for symptoms loses some of its efficacy.

I might have been sneezing more.

That's why I was relying so much on the temperature, but Maria had just gotten her most recent Covid booster Wednesday night, whereas I'd had mine a few weeks before. Individual immune response can vary, but that may have played a factor as well.

The point is, if you are supposed to take the Paxlovid within five days of symptoms, I was probably too late. I felt better Sunday than I had Saturday, but I had also had an extra day off the phone (which Monday ruined).

So, there are problems there, with my job situation, the national health care situation -- in terms of there even being an insurance industry and the cost and availability of tests -- and the plight of the elderly. that may have made it harder for me to handle everything correctly. 

On the plus side, I am fully vaccinated which probably eased my symptoms, I can telecommute, and I have just had Covid without missing a day of work or exposing any coworkers. We still have to hope Julie stays safe, but we work on opposite sides of the house, which I hope will help.

And I have a big box of KN95 masks.

My goal is still to get two negative tests before heading out into public again, or eating with my family and things like that, but the time frame has shifted.

I remember so many times people saying "We are all going to get COVID", and I was mad at that nihilism. I wanted to beat the odds.

Maria is very sorry.

We are still here.

Transgender Awareness Reading: For younger readers

There was one thing I kept noticing as I read the memoirs; it always seemed to be around the age of four that the difference was noticed.

Sometimes the writer had very clear memories, and sometimes it came from parents or grandparents, but the age was very consistent.

Adding to that this refrain from Believe Me, about knowing but not knowing the words.

It is very hard to feel that something about yourself is wrong, and to not understand. I don't want anyone to go through that.

Because of that, I like that there are both children's books and books geared more toward teens:

My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis, Suzanne DeSimone
I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel, Jazz Jennings, Shelagh McNicholas

Laverne Cox (Little People, Big Dreams, 86) by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara and Olivia Daisy Coles

Laverne Cox (Transgender Pioneers) by Erin Staley

The two on Laverne Cox are parts of series that cover many people. With I Am Jazz and My Princess Boy, those are coming out of family experience, but they are different experiences.

Jazz is very much a girl. It appears that the princess boy is not, he simply likes dressing in princess clothes. Maybe that will change as he gets older. One thing that we have frequently seen with the adults is that they reveal themselves in stages, perhaps testing the waters and seeing if they can be accepted.

We can do a lot to remove those concerns by being accepting and making that information available.

The common conservative objection is that you don't want to give them ideas. I know they hate changing their minds based on the lived experiences of others, but that lived experience demonstrates clearly that it does not come from them being given ideas. No amount of ignorance is going to keep someone from knowing. 

I did wonder how much of it is cultural. It seems clear that the gender identity is already present before four years old, but that is where they begin noticing and remembering the mismatch. I looked up the case of Dominican children where male primary sex organs did not develop until puberty, due to an enzyme deficiency:

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981

They did not explore that part a lot, but it appears the real age of conflict there was five, not a big difference.

I can't help but think that if we did not put so much emphasis on conformity to gender norms -- which is very wrapped up in patriarchy and misogyny -- we could make everyone's life easier. It would not change their gender identity; it would just help them navigate things better, and make decisions that would make their life easier.

That's worth a lot.

We need lots and lots of books.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/12/read-loveless-and-gender-queer.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/11/transgender-awareness-reading.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/11/transgender-awareness-reading-memoirs.html