The pity narrative? No thanks!
If you see yourself as a victim, you’re undermining your own ability to face the challenges in your life as a trans person. Reject the pity narrative. Live.
Talking about trans folks. And talking, and talking, and talking
The world is always talkin’ about trans! Do we exist? Do we have a right to exist? Are we a threat to children? Women? To confused cisgender folks who suddenly think it would be cool to be trans?
It’s human nature to lash out at our perceived enemies, but for trans people our anger seems at times to rise to another level. And it is not often our friend.
“There are so many of them now. It’s a trend.”
It seems to me if you’re always asking, “Do I feel like a woman now? How about now? Do I feel it now?” you may as well give up.
Disgrace at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
August 2020 – It is difficult to imagine a more bitter betrayal than that perpetrated on vulnerable communities by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR). In June 2020, employees and former employees charged that discrimination, sexual harassment and racism were endemic in the institution.
August 2020 – “Someone has been influencing you.”
JK Rowling (Things transphobes say no. 1)
June 2020 – JK Rowling uses a transphobic trope to illustrate her support for girls, but still claims she’s not transphobic.
June 2020 – “All forms of oppression are interrelated, you cannot be for Black lives if you do not emphatically support the cause for Black queer lives, Black trans lives [and] the lives of Black women.”
Advice for the Conservative Party of Canada
January 2020 – The opinion of a trans woman wouldn’t likely be of much interest to a Party that only accepted gay marriage in 2016 – eleven years after it was the law of the land! – but I have some advice for the Conservative Party of Canada: go back to find your future.
The pioneer days of trans acceptance
Although I wake up every day thankful to be a citizen of Canada, I am also often reminded that when it comes to trans acceptance in this country we are still very much in pioneer days.
Trans women’s lives, like those of cisgender women, are still regulated. I was reminded of this while reading Vivek Shraya’s I’m Afraid of Men. At one point she writes, “In the morning, as I get ready for work, I avoid choosing clothes or accessories that will highlight my femininity and draw unwanted attention.” Ah, women’s eternal dilemma. But was this me too? Was this why I had returned the hat back to its shelf?
This past year I have spent a surprising amount of time conversing with my 22 year old self.
I was 22 in 1977. It was a bad time to be trans and a bad time to be me. I was out of university and I knew what was supposed to happen next: a career and a wife. But that idyll seemed very unlikely for me. I was a closeted 6’3″ trans woman who saw no future for herself. In between bouts of excessive drinking, I thought my best chance at life was self employment. Perhaps there I might carve out an independent space so I could breathe a little. It wasn’t a bad idea, but my hopelessness stifled my motivation and I could never turn it into a credible plan. What I did instead was barely survive on a succession of suffocating government jobs.
Here’s the link to an article I wrote for the Ottawa Citizen on trans visibility. It was published March 5, 2018: http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/sypniewski-why-trans-people-arent-going-to-remain-invisible
A little while ago. I saw a commercial from Denmark that nearly had me weeping. It reminded me of something I wrote some time ago. The video of the commercial and the original article are here.
Popped buttons and predictable people
Clothes reflect power and social structures in society and are not as trivial as they seem. My clothes had given her the opportunity to impose a hierarchy in our relationship, namely, her right to be rude. More
Trans Ottawa 