All right, I've been a bit fail at updating this thing. (It's been almost a year! Clearly, I need to give this thing a bit more attention, as I feel I "need" it again.) Most of this is because I have been incredibly busy over the past year or so, and did not have time to update this blog. (I did update considerably in more private blogs, but for me, private and public blogging are two separate phenomena and require different mental settings, if that makes any sense at all. It does to me, but that may not translate over very well.)

Most of my energy over the past few months has been focussed on school; I started back in August, and finished the semester back in December, making all As in the process. I'm doing fairly well, especially considering that I haven't been to any sort of college in five years, and I have never, ever made straight As in my life, at least not when it counted for anything. I think that that "off" time that I had trying to learn about the way my brain worked paid off tremendously. I'd also been doing an internship which entailed giving LGBT sensitivity presentations and groups for staff and residents here, which ended yesterday.

Life at the house is fairly weird. Self-advocacy can be kind of difficult in this environment, and I feel as though the management cannot seem to get certain things at all.

For example, there is this incredibly creepy guy working here as a temp who comes in to fill in for people. He triggers the hell out of me, and other people here. I have heard about eleven or twelve separate people, me not included, complain about this guy. The case managers and programme managers won't listen to anyone at all where he's concerned. To them, he's a wonderful employee who cannot do any wrong, and my complaining about him is just me whining and trying to get my own way or something ridiculous like that. (Well, they never said that, but the implications were definitely there, for me.) I cite a pretty sketchy incident (him coming in my room when I told him clearly I wasn't dressed--I did cover myself up when he came in, but still!) and I get responses like "oh, it was just ONE INCIDENT, how could you keep focussing on it?" And when I mentioned the power differential, it was completely pooh-poohed. Seriously. How can they not see that there's a power imbalance and that they're working with youth who come from a vulnerable population? Jesus Christ.

And then there's the ableism. I mention when certain standard ways of handling things aren't necessarily appropriate for me and the way my brain works, and I get stock responses like "THIS IS A PROGRAMME" and "if you can't deal with it, we will help you find somewhere else" and "this is not a programme for people with disabilities." Whatever. People tell me to find work-arounds AFTER they give me one-size-fits-all "consequences" (which are bullshit and overkill for the situation). There are places in which I am kind of dumb. I have been telling people this for months and months on end. If I've done something that needs to be fixed, just tell me. Don't just write me up and act as though I'm...well, "being bad," to put it mildly. Don't deprive me of being able to stay inside on weekend mornings because I left a fucking POT on the stove and because I couldn't vacuum my room because I couldn't carry the damn thing from the first to the third floor without my back giving out. I seriously visually miss things sometimes. I have ALWAYS had visual processing problems, especially when cleaning large areas. I used to constantly get yelled at by certain family members because I'd be oblivious of things when I seriously tried my fucking hardest. But my best is never good enough, when it comes to these things, and it really frustrates me.

I am half-tempted to take some of this to the Human Rights Commission, but I don't even know if they'll listen to a relatively "high"-functioning person with a neurological disability as opposed to someone with a more visible disability that affects movement considerably or affects their intellectual abilities. What if they totally ignore me? What if I get retaliated against because I did take my discrimination complaints to the SF Human Rights Commission? "Oh, you complained about our rules! Sorry, you have to go."

Filing grievances doesn't do a damn thing. Reform around here has to come from the top, and the top is at such a far remove from the people actually receiving services that it's never, ever going to fucking happen.

Not Whining!

I must be nostalgic or something. I've been spending faaaar too much time on Richard Dawkins' site and watching a bunch of his videos, including The Enemies of Reason. Those who have known me for a long time remember when I was this ridiculous Richard Dawkins Fanboy™ who made lots of lengthy locked posts elsewhere about how wonderful he was. It makes me laugh now, because...there are some things that Dawkins says that I just don't agree with now. I think he was too harsh on some of the moderate religious people he dealt with. I still admire him as a scientist and a philosopher, though.

At least he cheers me up. Reminds me that there's a bigger universe out there. I remember when I got to see him in person in October 2006, when he gave a talk at the Palace of Fine Arts.

What's been going on over the past few months.

1. I almost died in January! (Well, I was in a non-fatal car accident. My forearm was grazed, but if the car had grazed me a few inches down, it would have killed me or injured me severely.)

2. I started testosterone on the 11th of February. My close friends already know this, but I haven't mentioned it publicly here yet.

3. People still CANNOT GET IT, and it's pissing me off. I mean, THEY DID NOT KNOW ME BEFORE I CAME OUT. Everyone who knew me before either gets it right or is out of my life. Why? Because I can't have people who don't respect my identity in my life. It's unhealthy for me. But of course, FTMs get the whole 'Oh, you want to be a boy? Nice girl, pat pat' behaviour. It makes me ill and makes me not want to talk to anyone that I can't trust. (I ended up having to do that for over a year.)

4. I moved to that transitional housing programme in December. I'm still working on them to get more accommodations. I have some, but I'm still frequently overloaded.

5. I'm still lonely and want to be around people that I can trust, and that I can be open with about certain aspects of my life that I cannot exactly divulge here. (No, I'm not secretly a criminal! I just have some things I can't share with the general public.)

6. I get frequently overloaded. I wish I could just withdraw sometimes.

I'm still here.

I'm here. I'm actually doing well in some ways -- I'll have somewhere to go for the next two years (it's one of Larkin's transitional housing programmes), and I have an interview for a paid internship in four days. I'm excited. Wish me luck! :)

In other ways, I am NOT doing well, and I don't know what to do about it. People repeatedly refer to me with the wrong terms. Someone whom I'm going to be working with at the new flat did that a few days ago, twice, and she did it loudly enough to humiliate me. (Or HE? If they keep doing that, watch me do it to THEM!!! I am so sick of it.) They are talking behind my back viciously. I cannot trust most people here. I thought I'd DEALT with my trust issues. I'm tired of not passing. I've thought about...well, I don't want to get into it, but I'm depressed over it, and I just don't know what to do about it.

I was talking to someone about my reactivity to misgendering, and we worked out that it's not just about the gender stuff; it's about a pervasive feeling of invisibility that I struggle with. People cannot ever see me; they see my race, or my incorrect body, or something else. If not that, a label. I am invisible, and I have grown tired of it.

I feel really lonely, too. I want people who can see past my stupid birth defect and see me. That's right. Not try to convert me to some new philosophy or feminise me or try to minimise my suffering. That's why I avoided most people for a year and a half, and only dealt with close friends, and outings when I really had to. Nobody can make me into a 'girl' or a representative of a race that I do not identify with if they can't see me.

An entry that doesn't consist of whining...for the most part.

(Warning: I'm total phail at productive language right now.)

The day before yesterday, I went to spend time with my friend Elena* (Yes, the same Elena that I mentioned in my inaugural entries) to celebrate my second year in the Bay Area. We went to the Zuni Cafe (which I mentioned previously, and ordered the same thing) at first, and then went to two private art galleries on Market Street. Both galleries had works by local, contemporary artists, and I found the offerings in the second gallery particularly striking. Most of the works were made of recycled material (I believe the exhibition is called 'Scrap'), and there was one that moved me. It was an installation that depicted Japanese-American internment, but represented through recycled items and sculpture.

Afterwards, we went to the de Young Museum, which was fantastic. We saw the Asian-American art exhibit, which was rather good. Oddly enough, I noticed a strong Diego Rivera influence on several of the artists. Actually, it probably shouldn't be considered that odd, because a lot of these artists were in California, and they would have been exposed to the Mexican muralists. There was also the Maya Lin exhibit, which I found interesting. She took topographical features and abstracted them into minimalistic sculptures. I quite liked the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit (I'm a closet fairy) -- there were some fashions that were inspired by famous artists and writers, like Van Gogh, Picasso, Shakespeare and Mondrian. There were also some nice American landscapes (I'm not as much a fan of those as I am portraits, but they were pretty) and some majestic-looking sculptures. All in all, it was a wonderful trip.

Following that, we went to the Cheesecake Factory and Starbucks. I got a yummy pumpkin-pecan cheesecake slice. God, that was good. It was a cross between pumpkin pie, pecan pie and cheesecake. I GOT THE TRIFECTA!

Today, I slept in and went to the library. There, I read Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, Amelie Nothomb's Fear and Trembling and Kevin and Cassidy Kearney's Accidental Genius. I was particularly pleased to finally get my hands on a copy of House of Leaves, because I had wanted to read it for a while. (Friends had mentioned it elsewhere, and I wanted to see what they were raving about.) I'm honestly not certain what to make of House of Leaves -- it seems to be a combination of surrealist literature, horror and one of the most typographically exacting works I've seen in ages. (A house that changes based upon people's expectations! Madness expressed through typography! Mysteries! And, erm, ftaires.) I thought it was good, but I wouldn't call it straightforward fiction in the same way I would Fear and Trembling. I'll definitely have to give it a second reading, though, to allow the ideas of the book to sink in. I didn't have enough time to explore it as much as I wanted to, unfortunately.

Fear and Trembling was a little odd, but not half as odd as House of Leaves. In parts, it was a seemingly realistic portrayal of a Western employee in a large Japanese corporation, but in other parts, it was...quite implausible, and felt like a cross between Bridget Jones' Diary and some absurdist play by Beckett or Ionesco.

The Kearneys' book was OK. I thought the parents were too focussed on making their brilliant son 'normal' (even though I commend their efforts in getting their son an appropriate education for his needs). And...honestly, Michael Kearney sounded like a frightful bore for someone that intelligent. You'd think he'd make...more, well, meaningful philosophical and intellectual contributions to society, but he sounded more like a...rapid gobbler of information than anything else. Not impressed.

Today was pretty low-key, although I did run into some frustrations. I signed up for a library card. They let me get one, but they made it a 'restricted' card (meaning I can only take out one book at a time) because I'm in a 'programme'. (That is, I used my Larkin Street Hire Up ID.) It said that they accepted student IDs, and I'm a student at Hire Up, right? I even had an official piece of mail from Human Services. But nooooo. Because I'm just in a 'programme', I don't get a normal library card. I smell discrimination, but I'm not sure how to complain about it.

*I really should stop using so many pseudonyms on this blog, but it's become habit. Never mind that most people who know me offline will probably be able to figure who I was from the context.

Guess where I was?

I was at the anti-Prop-8 rally at City Hall tonight. I've just got back to write about it. (And listen to 'Disturbia' for the umpteenth time.)

We shall overcome. We cannot be crushed.

In other news...

My Post-Racial Manifesto is in the November issue of Synchronised Chaos! Be sure to read it.