Anand on Earth

I hated Goldilocks with passion when I was in preschool. She was so delicious and obvious in her evilness. Stupid little appropriator! Those bears should have appropriEATEN her. Actually, I believe there’s a version where they do.

That story blog (linked, above) is a lesson in compassion, I tell you what.

One time I had a dream that everyone around me were bears, and I was a bear, too, so I wasn’t scared of getting eaten or anything, I was just, you know, chilling. Like, as a bear. Eating fish and berries and pawing bee hives and ransacking white people’s campsites in state parks and stuff. Sleeping in a pile of 25 of my best friends. Standing in rivers. The uuzh.

Anyhow, so all us bears were gonna go hunting together for grubs, but we had to run to get there, which was weird, but we had to run because, like, hunters had been encroaching on our territory over the last few years, and but then I was back at the time of the first time one of us had gone down with a bullet, but then the bear who got shot was Cher, or something, and then I woke up and was worried that Lady Gaga won’t be established enough as a long-term contender if (god forbid) Cher should be taken from us suddenly, especially with the impending destruction of the America LLC period of Earth history (and, assumedly, the music Industry).

Maybe I should go learn what kind of plants near my house are edible and do my stupid legal-name change so I can start saving up to invest in solar.

Love,

Anand

In the mean time, a sketch I’ve written for Finch & me to perform on camera (some day):

(credits)
Finch: (climbs up to top of cat tower) I’m a cat, I want to go up high.
Anand (me): Neat. Have you ever wondered why you want to climb up high?
Finch: No. I’m a cat. (stretch) Pet me!
Anand (me): (pets Finch) Do you think you climb up so high because you’re low-to-the-ground, and you have this biological urge to—
Finch: (looks up from petting-induced daze) What’s “biological”?
Anand (me): Oh. You’re a cat.
(credits)

Yesterday I was subjected to routine questioning about my genitals. Such are the moments that remind me I am part of a vibrant community of respected and dignified animals known as human beings on this planet we call Earth. Or something.

The questioner this time was a friend of a friend I was meeting for the first time. The friend-of-friend (FoF) had made some comment about his testicles (actually, I believe his balls came up in the context of a proclamation of his preference for a female medical practitioner in physical health examinations, and his disappointment in the paucity of hernia checks in his last few appointments), and then, as is natural in male-male relationships in this country, he asked me about my own testicles.

When I responded that I don’t have any testicles, he looked agog. Amazed that ball-less-ness (as I understand, a major bogeyman among male-identified testicular people) could coexist with the normal-enough guy he’d been talking to, the FoF’s curiosity was, naturally enough, piqued.

Okay, I’m too angry to keep up this facade of dry humor. I got really pissed off, but went into teacher mode instead of telling him to go read a fucking book or look anything up on the fucking internet. FOR THE RECORD:

1. I do not have testicles.

2. The reason for my nonposession of testicles is that I am transgender.

3. No, I have not had testicles removed, I was born without them, as I am a female-to-male transgender person, and not a male-to-female transgender person.

4. Did who look at my what? Please use intelligible vocabulary.

5. I was a lady, and now I am a man.

6. Yes, I take testosterone. No, not via pill (oral testerone was used in the 1940s, but the damaging effects on the liver showed researchers that another delivery system would be more prudent), via injection. Intramuscularly in my buttcheek.

7. No, I do not get ‘roid rage, because (a) I take appropriate doses, and (b) I take my shot in the muscle for slow, steady absorption into the bloodstream, instead of directly into a vein.

8. Yes, my English is just fine, because I am from Illinois.

9. I am from Illinois.

10. I don’t actually know very much about sex work in India, but I do know there is a large body of scholarship on the subject.

11. Yes, sex trafficking is indeed a problem. I am glad you enjoyed your stay in Amsterdam.

12. Oh, yes, you’re referring to the caste system, which is different from the variety of ethnic groups living indigenously in India.

13. No, those are names for different groups of people based on culture, that is not the caste system.

14. So the major religions in India are Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity (Catholicism, due to Portuguese colonization, especially in South India). The caste system was a 5-tiered class structure meant to explain the various–

15. Yes, so the caste system exists across multiple ethnic groups in India.

16. Yes, Hindus do exert major influence over government and public discourse in India. That is actually very astute of you, based on what I am learning about your understanding of the context we are discussing.

17. We are having hot weather these days. I find it difficult to sleep when the air pressure and temperature are so high.

18. No, I am not a ‘hermaphrodite’. How interesting that you have met a woman who has an atypical genital arrangement. There are many types of variation in genitals, and it is very rare for someone to be born with both penis and vagina, because of the way the tissues develop in utero. [I meant to talk about ovaries/testicles here and not penis/vagina. I regret my error in speech.]

19. No, I was not “one of those girls with moustaches”. Thank you for your sensitivity to a subject that has been cause for feelings of ridicule, shame, and general unpleasantness for the large number of women who have a condition called Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome and many other women who, for various reasons, do indeed grow virilized hair on their cheeks, neck, and lips. I object to your cavalier and demeaning characterization of these women.

20. What an interesting point in this conversation to mention that you did not mean ‘anything’ by your compliment on my linguistic skills in the English language and that you wish people like me would not be so quick in our defensive actions.

21. Where are you from? That is very interesting. I am glad you enjoyed your horticulture classes.

22. I have two sisters, both older than me. No, neither of them are “married with lots of kids”. One of them is married with no children, the other one is partnered to a woman, also with no children. By the way, both of my sisters have fascinating careers. One is a cognitive neuroscientist and is conducting research towards developing new and better educational methods for people with learning disabilities. My other sister is a community organizer, working to bring parents, teachers, school administrators, churches, and

23. Thank you for telling me that my brain scientist sister is more interesting. You have now succeeded in devaluing one of my sisters and showing fascination in another one. I am now in an awkward position.

24. I have enjoyed meeting you and sharing information across cultural boundaries. Now I will go to see another friend, who 10 years ago walked across a desert to come to this country. We will discuss my discussion with you, among other subjects, including the alarming, heartbreaking, infuriating, and ongoing street wars executed by drug cartels and police in Mexico, and the insensibly horrific siutation in Ciudad Juarez. Thank you for your time.

So I get to babysit this amazing three-year-old from time to time. His parents are social justicey-community-organizy-activisty-radical-professor types, which makes my job a million times easier than it could be otherwise. You guys, this is a situation in which my being trans, anti-capitalist, brown, and queer as f*ck are low-liability assets!

Anyway, sometimes I sit around thinking up fun things to do with the kid, whom I’ll call K. K is adorable. He’s got lots of curly hair, amazing pitch and rhythm skills, and one heck of a temper. Usually, he’s very reasonable, but this kid’s a Libra/Scorpio cusp, and when he wants what he wants, he wants it now and in no other way but his. He is also 3, did I mention that?

Anyhow, I think K is growing up in dangerous psychological times, when the allure of conformity is masked by superficial claims of infinite customization and individuality. Product integration (and, more broadly, the sewing of actively-planned messages into the under-fabric of all “mainstream” (=giant corporation) media) makes consumer desire seem natural, and as someone who still feels like fighting the urge to replicate the lifestyles I see on Modern Family, I know that this new, even-more-nefarious form of advertising and consumerism will lead people not to satisfaction, but the same kind of “corporate emptiness” (as Mr. Rogers called it) that has dominated U.S. macroculture since the turn of the last century.

Now, people of every political persuasion will tell you two things:

(1) You gotta start educating kids when they’re tiny, and be consistent, if you want them to grow up (safe) Like You (never were); and

(2) The OTHER SIDE is targeting the little tiny vulnerable innocent CHILDREN and we have to FIGHT BACK.

Reductions of self/other distinctions to meaningless blobs aside, both claims are still true.

When I was a kid (oh nooooooo, I sound like a grown-up), my mom had a hard and fast rule: my sisters and I were allowed to watch television programs on channels with commercials, but if we ever asked for anything we saw on a commercial, those privileges would be suspended immediately. I remember one year we were cut off from PBS, too, and had only channel 3, which we used to watch VHS tapes (which ended up being a fair amount of Disney, so oops!). As a kid, I did my best to adhere to the rule, and as an adult, I think mom-lady was right on.

And yet, I’m as much an instant-gratification-seeking millennial as many others in my generation. So, to enhance my own impulse control and teach K the value of patience, I’ve decided I want to take him on a field trip to Meijer, a regional super-retail chain.

Goal for me: seek, find, select, acquire, and purchase cat litter and dental floss in 20 minutes or less. Do not buy anything else. Do not pass toy section on first attempt. Do not dress K up in cute little clothes I have no reason to buy for him.

Goal for K: (phase 1) do not ask for anything, (phase 2) want nothing but the inner joy that comes from feeling spiritually whole. Okay, maybe that’s phase 3.

Challenges: overstimulation, wanderlust, other tall people (um, relative to K) with pants that look like mine, and hundreds of thousands of shiny packages cloying for attention.

Reward: we get to drive over bumps in the road (K loves riding over bumps. As I explained to him the first time he mentioned “more bumps!”, we live in Michigan, where there is no shortage of potholes, and I am more than happy to oblige him this small thrill).

Coming soon: Reality check, or, what actually happens when K & I get to Meijer.

Resist harm.

I’m now in my 6th month as the library intern at the UM Spectrum Center, and I’m embarking on my first major weeding adventure! This means I get to see the collection up close and personal, as I examine each and every book and determine whether we should keep it where it is, reclassify it, or send it out to pasture.

We have some awesome shit, you guys. Consider this: Becky Bohan’s Fertile Betrayal (Madwoman press, 1995).

I LOVE THAT THIS BOOK EXISTS.

From the blurb on the back cover: “Veterinarian Nedra Wells has moved to a small town in Minnesota to open her own mixed-animal practice. For years she has envisioned being a country vet like her father, and after meeting and falling in love with school teacher Annie Callahan, Nedra was sure she could have it all… Against a backdrop of a possible fracture in her relationship, Nedra’s practice confronts her with a deadly health crisis in a local cattle heard [sic]. … Nedra’s inquiry leades her into a broader investigation and ultimately, to the solution of a very human problem.”

The folks at Awful Library Books might disagree, I say this one is a KEEPER for sure.

If I had a pot of money to sit on and give to people who are trying to answer important social questions*, I would say, “Hey! Does anybody have the time and resources to answer this question? I wanna know to what degree facebook users consciously project (un)desirable self-images onto their online representations through their profiles, and in particular through status updates. To what degrees do the status updates present more “positive” and “negative” self-evaluations? Can status updates, being a channel of rapid multidirectional communication, be reliably used as indicators of self-image? And can they be used effectively by peers and school nurses for early-detection of mental health problems among school-age kids? And what are the ethical considerations of a school nurse monitoring students’ facebook statuses (including: to what degree are students really aware of facebook privacy settings and how to use them?)?

See, that’s a perfect book based on 5 years of research I’ll never do! Or could be part of a great graduate-level class I’d love to take (or teach, if I had some of the answers)!

*Isn’t the idea of a research grant cool, when you break it down to basics? Too bad the organized Right has so much money poured into producing biased social research with poor methodology. Research is 15% what questions you ask, 25% why you ask them, and 60% how.

Over the holidays, I ventured East (but mostly South, actually) to rendezvous with my sister and her partner in Pennsylvania at said partner’s parents’ house, where we pickled pepper plants patiently. Meantime, my other sister, her new husband, and my papa flew to Mexico City to visit husband’s family. My ma stayed in LA and partied with her friends.

Whew!

Today, my facebook live feed popped up a short conversation between my papa and Heidi’s mom.

Oh, brave new world, that has web features in it! Seriously, though, how cool is that? Social media promoting a channel of communication that I’ve only ever seen, well, not work out so well: parent-in-law* to parent-in-law. If this catches on, a lot of women could be a lot safer in their marriages: more contact yields more investment in relationship yields increased accountability. Sure, there’s probably a particular subset of all parents-in-law who are more likely to use facebook regularly and add content, but it’s not necessarily the ones who’re already talkers–the interwebs have always been a boon to the introverted, the shy, and the awkward. More voices, more shared information, more better.

*Okay, well it ain’t the law everywhere yet.

I would make a hobby-project out of preserving digital Star Trek fan fiction. So much of it is from the mid/late nineties, on those old pop hosting services like AOL Hometown and Geocities, which today look rather like I imagine Rome did after the barbarians swept through.

Geek history needs to be preserved so that my children’s children’s children may revel in this website, which is dedicated entirely to stories about a prehensile plant that appeared in one episode of Voyager. Sadly, many of the links no longer work. But this one has pretty good surrogate records, so we may at least enjoy the image of what might have been behind a summary–which now floats above the ethereal nothingness of the story like an epigraph on a tombstone– that said only, “The Plant gets to have some fun, while Tuvok is… otherwise indisposed.”

“This great victory will reverberate up and down America, putting the fear of God — and the American voter — into the hearts of weak-kneed and weak-willed politicians everywhere.” — National Organization for Marriage executive director Brian Brown [1].

A couple of points, Brian.

1. It was a defensive victory… you know, like how we “win” by stopping you guys from getting what you want, which is to make us disappear, or at least not make so much noise comin’ out of that velour rainbow wardrobe in the corner of your bedroom.

2. “weak-kneed and “weak-willed”? You mean, like people who can’t resist being queer? Don’t be such a Puritan, Brian. You wouldn’t have to put nearly as much will into being a ‘mo as you seem to put into not being one. Don’t worry, it’s pretty nice over here. There’s unicorns and time-traveling lesbians and football players everything, just like you promise in your TV ads.

xo