If my schedule holds true I’m writing this post a week before this blog is going live and I’m freaking out. Obviously there’s the usual nerves around starting a new project, particularly a project that means a lot to me and that I’ve wanted to do for years, but there’s a new flavor of anxiety that I haven’t experienced: I’m a huge, massive, fucking hypocrite.
Last night as I was changing out of work clothes and into my blintzes-macaroni-and-cheese-and-wine clothes my brain pointed out that I was doing this while trying to avoid looking at my naked body. This isn’t new, I’ve been avoiding my body for years, but last night my brain wanted me ask myself why I, a woman who often can’t touch her body, could dare presume to start a blog talking about bodies and sex (something which frequently has to do with bodies)? What a hypocrite.
Of course there are obvious holes in that. Namely there’s the fact that I don’t want this blog to be a ferociously positive, affirmation filled, love your flaws type of place. I want to write about my struggles with my body, how these struggles flow into my sex life and how I work with them. I want this blog to be honest, to talk about the things that make me feel ecstatic, and what makes me shut down (Hint: It’s a culture entrenched with transphobia and transmisogyny). Mostly I want to write this blog because when it comes to bodies and sex and trans women it’s hard to find a story I can relate to. When I read pieces written by and about trans women they’re often “I love my body and sex life now but it wasn’t always this way but it totally is now”-type pieces in which I find glimpses of similarities to my own life but often they’re so polished by the cis media that they’re not much use for me. I’m not saying that these personal narratives aren’t valid (they’re super valid) I would just like to see a wider range of personal experiences being shared.
As someone who wants to be an activist for improved quality of life for trans women I’m often frustrated by how little I’m actually doing. Part of this is that I don’t see how any of my skills could be useful but between working to make ends meet and dealing with anxiety and depression I simply don’t have time to learn more about civil disobedience, outreach, whatever else it is that I don’t feel qualified to do. What I do have are my life experiences, my writing, a deep interest in sex and belief that there’s great power in marginalized and oppressed people sharing their stories. And hey, I love sharing my stories about sex.
When I write about myself I need to fight my learned behavior of sanitizing everything to be good a Good Representation Of Trans Women. This is where my feelings of hypocrisy come in. I feel as though I should just write things like “How I Learned To Love My Body”, “100 Ways Trans Women Are Just Like Cis Women”, “I Think Porn Is Exclusively Bad”, and “I Think Porn Is Exclusively Good.” My experiences aren’t as clean or nice as that and dammit if I’m going to put myself into a box of Good Representation of Trans Women. It’s not just that I’m not a “Good” (Read: makes cis people feel inspired or good about themselves) representation of trans women I’m not a representation of trans women PERIOD. I’m a representation of Constance Augusta Aloysius Zaber and that’s all I want to be. I hope that there are trans women who read what I write and find some comfort or help or connection or something in it but I don’t want, or claim, to Represent The Trans “Community.” So no sanitizing of my experiences here, particularly because doing so would strip the truth from my stories and probably make them boring. (If I did sanitize would I still be able to share my experience using a sex toy that shook my genitals so hard I pissed? Probably not and EVERYONE wants to hear that story.)
So my blog is going to have my messy, conflicting, sometimes unpleasant experiences but that’s ok because they’re my experiences. They’re my experiences as a trans woman who found that working on taking control of my sex life back from a cis society has helped me to find the rare moments of pleasure and comfort in my body and my life.
All that being said: I’m still nervous as fuck.
the jaded matron 