I'm a waitress. Be one too.

To have acceptance for all variation, which is the abundance we find in humans, this is and will be my desire. But sadly this is not the way of things here, where, for example last month TWO men beat infants to death (well one is still in a coma), boxing with a 2 year old and in the other case a 9 month old in order ‘to make him a MAN.’

The statement implies that manhood in the west is something that can be taken away by not fitting into the gender standards, both in actions, presentation, orientation and otherwise. I am sure we have all heard of ‘Real Men’, which begs the linguistic question of ‘What then is everyone else?’ The worst possible thing to have happen, as many males see it, is to lose or even be questioned about ‘manhood’. If someone is questioning if they have it, then it is already too late, they seem to think. That is how, three years ago, ANOTHER man, actually put boxing gloves on his one year old and progressively beat him to death. His reason, “I didn’t want him to be gay, I wanted him to be a MAN.”

Do men need to put the word, ‘real’ in front of themselves in order to know they are men? I have never found that those who are, I use the term, ‘gentlemen’, would need that word. They as men who know how to be gentle, and yet to lose nothing of maleness, and know that kindness and caring do not diminish them.

We have lost this lesson often. In this culture, women learn that they are to bend, to change as demanded, while men are to remain steadfast. Why? Well, probably because the guys are so scared to be thrown off the ‘man’ truck that the definition of that means loving the guy involves changing how women act. This is true in the workplace as well. It is sad because for those who want to experience the gender representation or interests are those who are wise. Merlin, in the great description of his wisdom listed among his great feats of magic, and learning that he lived for seven years as a woman, and also a wife in the hearth. This is listed as something that brought him wisdom, which increased his knowledge, magic, and understanding.

In other cultures, gender moving, or going from one gender or set of interests or presentation to another is not that big a deal. There are words for those who have just changed gender presentation, and words for those who choose no gender presentation, but once person has finished changing, or decided to stay in one gender, then they are referred to as that gender. It is a gift.

Compare that to a study listed in Michael Kimmels’ A Gendered Society: Junior high school students in North Midwestern States were asked what they would do if they woke the next morning to find themselves transformed into the opposite sex. The girls thought about the question for a while, expressed modest disappointment, then described the kinds of things they would do if they were suddenly transformed into boys. Become a fireman, doctor, policeman, or baseball player were typical answers. The boys, by contrast, took virtually no time before answering. “Kill myself” was the most common answer when they contemplated life as a girl.

No time, immediate response: kill myself.

That’s not about sickness, or dementia, or being disabled, since I had one person tell me how all those in the catagories, particularly dementia would be better off dead. But then, that is about control, isn’t it. People don’t want to be disabled because it means aspects they don’t have control over. You can show them studies that people with lock-ed in syndrome, like the one mentioned by William Pearce at his blog, are general happy. And they just don’t want to believe you. You can tell them that people in wheelchair are, after a new life routine is established, for the most part, in the majority, generally happy. Sure, there are people who are unhappy and I think that everyone has aspects of their life of which they are not happy but generally, happy. Not sitting around waiting for someone to approach them with a pillow to smother them.

So, from 14 years, the girls, who know that life is not exactly something you are going to control, think about it seriously. And for the boys, perhaps they think they are being watched and that if they even THINK about it, they won’t be a ‘real man,’

However that occurs, it seems a loss. It is like choosing in junior high to never, ever leave your town because that way everything will stay the same. Except, that the town you grew up in doesn’t stay the same, does it?

And that is because we have a society in which male and female is something that absolutely MUST be consistent from birth. And that is NOT a gift.

Linda was, when government downsized, the only ‘out’ LGBT person in her ministry, the only ‘out’ manager. Does that mean that gays and lesbians are 1 in 6,000 in Victoria? It might explain the low Pride turnout.

In the episode ‘We come in Peace’ in season 2 of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, I was happy to find the first affirming trans main character I had ever seen in the West. Alison, called Skynet coming after her, ‘A gift’. ‘Who has the courage to truly live the life they want to live deep inside?’ And during her hypnosis session, to find a factory where they are building terminator parts, Alison talks a lot about secrets. The job was where you were picked up and blindfolded to the job site, at the job, you had an office with no window, and you were driven home.

‘Do you mind not being able to see?” she is asked in hypnosis.

“No, (a laugh), I don’t mind, I like secrets.”

“What about the office? No way to view in or out.”

“No, I like not being seen, and besides, I have a secret too..”

“What is your secret?” the hypno-therapist asks.

(a laugh) “The secret is…..I’m a waitress.”

It is a reference to something Sarah Connor tells her, that in the same way Alison killed the person she was, and became Alison, Sarah before she became a warrior, a spy, a mother, she was a waitress. And that was the part and personality she had to kill off to survive. I like that, because now, it takes so much pain, so much effort and determination to hold on. I have to do things which make me cry and shiver in fear, and I do them regularly. It is not a life I would have thought possible, and yet it is possible. I used to be a waitress. (hard job, particularly when liquor is involved but not hard in the way needed when survival is at stake).

The discrimination, which is violent, and often life threatening in active or passive ways towards those who are LGBT comes because to quote the manga Aeisu, “In this society there is only a path of to be men and to be women.” And if someone crosses the perceived aspects of gender, or sex toward another’s personal belief, or cultural belief, and they feel threatened because of that, then violence, active or passive, like denial or services, or housing, or jobs can and often does occur.

We pretend that the burden of bullying is too great. When intersex children are born, or in puberty, or late puberty, they find out, the first concern of all: doctors, family, teachers is to hide, hide it all away. ‘It will be too hard on the child’ the doctor will tell the parents, or the teacher will say. ‘Other children won’t understand, the parents won’t understand.’

‘understand’ is code for, ‘will be intolerant, will bully, will harass, will humiliate.’ It is the same argument used against trans teens, which is why 50% of homeless teens are gender variant, or orientation variant.

And so, all of us, as a society, live a life of secrets, or the enforcing of secrets. Why? Because it produces happier people: no, teen suicide attempts for gay teens are 4 times national average and for trans teens is up to 10 times. Personal violence, destruction of books, of cars, of lockers, and bullying go up to levels where it is a small, small minority which has NOT experienced it. And why? I don’t understand, except what has already been written on the body. And that means, I know it occurs, and I know how horrific that is, and that it can leave a person terrorized, or shunned, or change behavior due to fear for years, or decades. A bad incident of harassment as a child cross dressing can make a boy into a father who ‘hates those queers’

I don’t like bullying. It has a twisting kind of ugly that eats away at both people. Also, please refrain from beating infants to death to make them ‘men’ or take away choice and spend years dispiriting a child to make her ‘a proper girl.’ Or 'my princess.' I know I’ll never be ‘proper’ and I think I would be concerned if I was.

A bad Fall: damage severe

Bad news and um, bad news. I am supposed to be in bed due to a bad fall lateral from my wheelchair yesterdaywhich gave me: a concussion, whiplash, a something rotator something in the shoulder, partial dislocation, torqued back, sprained wrist, ripped muscles on four ribs and between the ribs and slight sprained elbow. I kinda went sideways and smashed my head so hard that all I saw was this red flash (it as very odd, if I had seen ‘POW’ inside I would have thought it was a cartoon) at this point my shoulder slammed down, then other parts, most not arriving atop my head. But as my head was twisted (kinda like an owl!) and I couldn’t move, it turned out later to be very, very painful. Which is why one handed typing is slow and this blog post is short (9 hours later....).

HOWEVER…..the comments were so good on the last post, and I really appreciate the people who made them, I have responded to every person, so if you have any other observations/questions/things to share after those responses, that would be cool. I want to do a blog post on chromosome 17B-3-HSB and what a Canadian doctor in Palestine is doing (which isn’t really that nice!). But that is after lust, desire and tea. Gotta take time for tea! Nice hardcover book she is reading too.

Okay, finished ALL the comments on the previous post, on Intersex, please let me know, keep the dialogue going. Text me, write a comment?
I am high and low on pain killers because so sore and don’t want to lie down until this is done! So on to the important question: In school, where you the one who wrote on others with your markers? Wrote on yourself and were sent home having coloured your fingers multi-colours? Or the one who was written upon? What I found out is that in this picture, Linda went, “That’s me.” And I thought, “The crazy girl writing on people, I NEVER knew.” And she continued, “My friend F. used to write on me all the time.” - ahhh, she was the passive one written upon! For me, I was the wild one, but I couldn’t by nature and ethics force myself on others so I wrote on myself. Indeed, in high school one of the assignments I gave was to write a poem ON your body and see how the poem you write changes when the medium you write on changes from paper to your body. Great idea, and a great way for a student teacher to end up with the educational supervisor going, “You told them to do WHAT? No, you tell them to read 20 pages of Lord of the Flies and answer 10 questions, no writing on the body, non of this ‘poetry boxing matches’ you have….we can hear the screams and cheering all the way into the office! Just follow the syllabus!”

Oh, how to explain that 15 year old girl taking off her top in my class while popping gum going, "I call this: Cleavage"....uh....distract...."Would you like a cup of tea, Supervisor?"
Tomorrow Linda has promised to help me bath, oh boy, rub a dub dub – is there room for two of us on the tub bench? We shall see! Linda keeps wanting to put me to bed. Which would be great if we went in together but she wants me to be in bed just because my hands are so purple you wouldn’t believe or I am ill or I still have the whiplash and I pass out a lot (is 25 times a lot? I think it needs to be like 30 to count as a ‘a lot’ right?). Basically my plan of ‘Do what I want while Linda isn’t looking and then go, ‘oops was I not supposed to do that?’ isn’t working because during my cute, ‘oops was I not….’ I end up stop breating and faceplant (messes up the hair too!). I did however get some things to send to people sorted that I have been meaning to sort for weeks – yeah! Loss of time and faceplants – boo!

If you give a damn about this blog or about me, and oddly, I think of my readers as my friends, and that I have dozens of correspondences I enjoy. So the truth is, for a while now, we are just trying to get to the end of each week. And this week, the preparation to make the final move into hospital was made, and it was Linda’s FIRST choice. She HOPED I would not regain consciousness so she could transport me to hospital, even though there is little they can do there. That is how bad it is. I am not ill, I am not dying, I am visibly declining in health at a rate which would be weeks or months in days. We talk of Sakura-con, and we talk of where exactly to scatter ashes.

I am beyond the rim of the cliff. Okay. I fell. I didn't die, but I didn't get better either. I fell down and I am on a little ledge and I hope damn it that I can get back up and climb back up, but without significant rest, like week to weeks of bed rest, that is simply impossible. And yet, with the gravel and movers, I can't rest in bed. I have had a fever for a month straight because my autonomic system is failing. I cannot sleep to rest, or even lay there. No laptop, no TV. No use of one arm.

To give a SINGLE yet graphic example of what is needed so many times a week, those 'difficulties' with my intestines means that I am in a small room, with no air conditioning, and little to no natural lubrication after daily preparation, three times a week for about FOUR HOURS. I do that so when I leave, I do not have jaundice or toxins building in my system, though sometimes, I do, and the puss comes out my eyes. When I leave, I am exhausted and I have the physical after-effects of being forcible violated.

Yeah, that’s right, raped. I am being raped every week by this disease, LITERALLY. I bleed from my intestines, from my anus. That needs to heal, only it has little time before the next time. That is one of dozens of things I have to do in order to stay alive. Most weeks I bleed from my anus, from my nose, from my mouth, and last week from my ear, and puss from my eyes. I drink 2 liters a day of water, every day, to get out the toxins. I have been drinking gatorade for years and I hate it. I hate it and I drink it. Only lately, I have been too sick to eat. To weak to drink. Because I no longer have my ability to externally do what I need to survive, my body literally withers. You would not recognize one of my hands as a human hand anymore. It bleeds inside regularly. This isn't a metaphor, this is life. This is my life.

If you care, you should know because I am telling you now, I have no interest in being told to ‘go into that good night’ or ‘fly away’ but I want to go to Sakura-con, I want to see the cherry blossoms.
So, Help! HELP! Can anyone hear? Do you know what I do when for four hours I am having bits of my flesh in my colon ripped away so that I can live? When I am not screaming, or moaning, I try to read something to look forward to, I read manga. Manga is medicine. DVD’s are medicine. CHOICE is medicine. When I spend all my time, for as long as I can remember (the mid term memory problem, right?), just trying to survive, with nothing to look forward to because I stayed up and read all the new books/manga in order to stop bowel impacting and now I lay in bed and wonder how much blood is pooling around my anus. Is it staining the bed? And what I have to look forward to tomorrow? To having to do THIS. AGAIN.

That is why a $5, a $10 gift certificate matters, at Akadot, at Amazon, at Amazon.co.uk. Because then I have now what I did not have before. CHOICE. I can send a gift. I can get Linda a romance. I can get something for myself. I need a DVD player for the bathroom for when I cannot read, and for the times when the noise is so loud outside I cannot do anything. Linda found one for $50, and it is on the wish list. Will it make me happy? I think you misunderstand, it may make me LIVE longer, make it so that I LIVE the 28 days until a new neurologist appointment. LIVE until a new GP appointment. LIVE. Or if you want you can donate $50, and my first of 8 small bowls of pills costs $16, my second costs $8, my third costs $17 – three bowls of pills: some for my immune system, some for the free T4, and the rest is pain, pain, pain medication. And it helps. Kinda of like when you ask a new parent how they are sleeping and they look at you with the thousand yard stare and say, “You know, now and then.” Yeah, I get pain relief….now and then.

Never you mind, just keep thinking of me as the postcard project and as the indomitable Elizabeth with squirrels. Because you haven’t bothered to adjust your view of me with the disease. You don’t realize the level confusion, fear, pain that I live in every day. And that Linda and I work to get to the end of each week with me alive. That is why I haven’t returned your email. Yes, brilliant brain, but also a terrified child, becasue I am also someone whose only memory is pain as if someone had ripped the skin from my back with a whip of chain mail. If a friend, will you love ME as a friend, the ME here? No, not the me who started this blog, but the me who is here now, struggling, still fighting every day, but someone who is, in many, many ways, in need of understanding, and of soothing calm voices.

To say, I understand, no, to understand is to know I forget every few days, to know that everything you send gets a post it note, and so you leave messages of love for me. That is just one type of understanding. I might forget ever few days but still, to live, I have to go and do a dozen terrible things a day, every day, on and on for....ever. So for the child me, a little something more often makes the difference because that Beth made it this week (thank you W., you helped, all those weeks, you really, really helped). She is alive, and it seems that there is a ‘yes, yes, but show us, give us the posts, be there’ – I am here, because I have fought hell, and you want me to go back and fight hell again…..without a single thing to look forward to. This week I spoke to two people. This week I looked outside three times. This week I damaged almost every part of my left side and I have a cut on my face on the right. There are NO reserves. I am fighting to be here another year by being here another week. Now I am fighting another hour and day to be here another half week…that’s it.

Why the hell should I? I don’t know, I don’t know, I go crazy trying to tell people, “I care, I care” and having bits of love, tangible bits of love. No, no, not the gifts. I have sent out, in the last month, about 25-40 manga as gifts, so say Cheryl and Linda. I have received in the last month…..four? In the month before I sent out 18-24 manga as gifts, I received……(according to Cheryl and Linda)..none or one.

I know in my head that people care, I know that people send gift cards sometimes, and that is good. It makes it so I have something to look forward to, so that room isn’t just the room of despair.

I AM thankful for every bit of choice that allows me to claw an inch forward. That helps me wake up and do what needs to be done that day, because I have to look forward to deciding what CAN be done, as I have a choice, a gift certificate perhaps. Except I am too ill to be able to get out of bed for two days. I know every inch of that wall. When I sleep, when I am half awake I think that my hospital bed has chains across my legs, that it is like a walled crib, holding me down for the disease to eat another piece of me.

I want to read a romantic series that gets me aroused. Don’t you? Make me blush, find me some gentle sweet uke to grow from innocence. I read Butterfly, Flower A story where the daughter of a noble time honored family who has run into ruin is asked at her very first job interview (as she was trained to be a princess of sort), for an office job: “Are you still a virgin?” She is mortified, answers yes, gets the job and asks a co-worker, what was with that 'virgin' question. This produces a big laugh, as no one else got that questions and second, 'Who is a virgin these days?'

Her male boss, after he is so mean to her, she remembers is her male bodyguard/nanny, sworn to her. At work his is the manager from hell trying make her a perfect elite office manager, but one minutes out of work, and he won’t let her ride the train, but drives her home, calls her, ‘My lady,…” because she will always be of the noble line, and the young girl he promised to protect. Problem is, she falls for him. He doesn’t get it. She kisses him. He says he ‘understands.’ Whew, he isn’t as dense as she wondered. He continues, “you will one day meet someone suitable for you and need to practice your kissing on me, I am always here as your servant, my lady.” AHHHHHHH! What will it take for him to get a clue?

Ooku volumes 1 and 2 – put out in the deluxe edition, winner of the Eisner award is an Edo period love story. Japan has a plague which kills 75% of the men. Poor Samurai family sell their son’s seed to survive, prostituting their children. One man only has sex with poor women, women too poor for his ‘noble’ seed. In a world without honor, he decides to enter the service of the Ooku, which is 3000 males only, except for the female Shogun. There are two books so far, each book is a complete story, and together they are a complete story. Together they tell a story that inspires me to go on. It tells me that sometimes greatness is not having a title, or being famous, but in being there, simply being there for someone who is wounded in the soul. Like chicks huddling together, I can identify, knowing only the hands and hearts that show love, my memory is in who I shrink from, and who I lean against. It is a yaoi romance, it is a straight romance, it is a romance for all time. It is about the after-affects of rape, and the pain and suffering that come from it, as well as the cost of keeping ethics in a place where all people care about is position and power.

I read the whole series of Cynical Orange, now done, in nine volumes, the retelling of The Little Prince, as The Little Princess, a girl lost and the idea of appearance, and dependency.

These aren't manga tucked away, just something I read on the bus, this is something I read after I pray to God, “Please, let it be over, let it be over quickly.” I read it when the tears of pain are cleared from my eyes,because I don't want to smudge the pages. I grip the pages and try to read the text, because it helps to relax, to have something to look forward to. It makes it easier.

Before you tell me: The magic bullet (anal suppository) does not work for me. Senecot does not work; Milk of Magnesia does not work. It is not just the colon, it is the whole system. It is what I eat to slow the blood that comes down my intestines congealed to the sides of shit, the blood that runs down my intestines, pooling in the colon. It is the roughage I need so things move, yet same roughage that cuts me up (but less of that). It is the balance. A single carrot, can leave me bleeding for a week.

This is hell, but it works, and I live. I live and manga is what keeps me sane. And every person who gives a manga, there is a post it note with a name, and in the middle of the night your name is whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Because you made 30 minutes something other than rocking and letting the tears fall.

Someone wanted me to put the medical stuff up at the top of my wish list. I didn’t understand. It IS.

To be somewhere else, to feel something else, to want to be in an adventure. Now, so disabled, I am a child again, emotionally, and in ability. I dream of things I want to do, of places I want to see. And books and manga and DVD’s and artbooks are the way I do that. They are the way I communicate to you, and the way I communicate to me.

Do you remember the wonder of a child, of exploring a place, a simple building that you had never gone in before? And inside is a wonder, you learn it is a pipe organ but for you it is a wonder, and there is a kind adult there who listens to you, who tells you about it, you maybe lets you play. These are the emotions I seek.

I cannot go outside, I cannot wander into buildings, and I am entirely dependant in my life on kind adults, and yet totally at the mercy of cruel ones. “Why do things have to be so hard?” Linda says, “I think about it and I don’t know, I don’t know why.” We just hang on, go on.
I find wonder in art books that I get from Japan, where the diversity of art is amazing – Pop, one of the great Artists in Japan is doing the entire fairy tale series, from Red Riding Hood to Little Mermaid – there is one on my wish list, as it is translated to English. What person with a serious degenerative disease does not understand Little Red Riding Hood and how hope is turned into despair?

Well, on to the slumber then, the mess of a slumber party is a lot more like THIS, with people waking at different times and snacks and crying and living. Not quite the lesbian lingerie parade. This is human.

I long for the spring, I long to read Ooku 3 or Butterfly 2, which Linda says are not soon but not far-far either. I long to get art books. And I long to give out the presents to my friends. Sure, I feel like the kid suck at home sick over summer break, when everyone is too busy to remember, because that is who I am. I still open myself up, wide open, in every blog post. I want to live another year. And I pay, I bleed in bleakness each day to do that, each hour of each day. And right now, well, it is too damn close. Losing is dying. My dreams are in red.

Let me just think of the spring, when the cool means sweating or not doesn’t matter, and I will have been able to have my hair cut and will be outside, reading a book for....pleasure. Linda reads to stay sane, for both of us; I read because if I scream I will wake Linda up, I read because I want to be at a ball, or talking to people, or working at an office, trying my best. I am so willing to join the author and fantasize.
But sometimes, I do break down sobbing when I have to come back here.

Cat 'Aww!', woman as construct, crossdressing and Intersex/DSD issues

Last time I blogged before the video, I mentioned in a blog post about how the societal expectation of women is a construct, one that is expected by men and maintained by the silence of women.

Part of our western womanhood is beening taught that if we are NOT like the Barbie/June Clever image then it is shameful, embarrassing, and something that if talked about at all, is talked about, or rather TOLD to you in a female only assembly with the instruction of silence. Always told not to tell.

So who then is to blame the guys for being a little confused that women have all sorts of things they just ‘don’t talk about’? US! That ranges from disordered eating, facial hair (40% clear facial hair once a week, 5% every day), hair loss, balding, monobrows and thick eyebrows, PCOS, extreme cramps, extreme PMS, periods every 10 days or once every 2 years. Of course we NEVER fart and we don’t ‘sweat’, we ‘glow’. I am sure that each woman could list how they are not…. Fill in the blank. Is the ‘Swimmer Shoulders’ or even the host of disease which only now are not just considered ‘women’s disease’ like CFS/M.E. and fibro. Why a ‘woman’s disease’? Because it goes in the section the general population and most men either don’t understand, don’t WANT to know about, or is just part of the mystery of ‘you know, women get……stuff.’

Only in the last year or two were the same sexual disorders men have like lack of arousal (erection issue for dudes) which were present in women (no sensation or too much or constant sensation) were considered to NOT be part of a) a psychological issue stemming from the woman and b) probably Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And that is AFTER studies show MRI’s that women are telling the truth and even then, it takes on average a woman FIVE doctors before she is believed.

If we had a stack of medical diseases and conditions that women who had them were blamed and shunned for having them, it would be quite the Tower of Babel. Of course, that shunning also induces silence, when the word ‘hysterical’ is involved, or is blamed on psychological factors though that includes, or has included, MS, seizure disorders/epilepsy, Autism Spectrum, CFS, Fibro, Lupus (yeah, that used to be ‘mental’) along with most genetic disorders (now only believed due to genetic testing).

We are part of that silence. We too easily accept that there is ‘too much’ to know and that stereotypes of what we shouldn’t talk about dictate our responses. I too easily accepted that, and in parts I still do.

Intersex does not mean something where there are three boxes: ‘male’, ‘female’ and ‘other.’ Though the six to eight heavy machinery laying foundation 6-20 feet from me for 10-12 hours a day and computer problems have slowed me down, to the point of very ill and supported by Linda, I will be talking about the lie we believe, the lie of ‘normal.’ Over this and other topic specific posts. It was the reaction from the intersex issue earlier that encouraged me to start with a 'Basic' intro.

Survey after survey, do you know the first thing that parents feel when told their baby has ambiguous genitalia or an intersex condition? Shame. Shame and ‘what did I do wrong?’ That also happens to be the SAME feeling that parents with babies who have large wine birthmarks on their face feel. Does that make that little boy or girl an ‘other’? Not a boy? Not a girl? Because of a birthmark? Sure, it is different: it doesn’t involve those words: the one we get all hyper about, particularly in the USA: SEX.

First, don’t use the term Hermaphrodite. Sure, it is a ‘historically medical’ term (as are SO MANY offense terms). But the same ‘historically medical’ people who made and used the terms like Pliny the Elder also said that the only cure for a headache was tying fox testicles around your forehead (People with Migraines might be so desperate to try but trust me, or trust Stephen Fry, it doesn’t work!). So unless you feel confident enough in medicine to separate the four humours from the anatomy of melancholy and can explain the use of SRY in genitalia development, please don’t use terms that those with intersex disorders (including the 1 in 500 men with klinefelter syndrome) find hurtful. That’s why clinically now they are called DSD (Disorders of Sexual Development: which to many people SOUND like the person has some puberty problem or has become a peeper, hence not really loved by many intersex individuals). It is called DSD because most conditions stem from that time at 17 weeks when the sexual development occurs (Not gender identity, but the actual 'bits').

Okay, if you, a loved one, a friend have a white spot, if you have webbing in your toes, if you have an extra nipple or like me a few extra ribs, then you have some anomalies in your 46 (or 45 or 47) chromosomes. So do people who are born with ambiguous genitalia, or people who like those with diabetes who have problems with insulin, have problems with androgen, or estrogen. Except androgen and estrogen can make you stand out as different during puberty, when you least WANT to be different that way. Of course, it also happens in male and female menopause, but we don’t email or tell all the women taking hormone supplements due to early onset or post menopause that, “It’s okay, I still try to think of you as a woman.” No more than we tell a guy with diabetes, “Don’t worry, It doesn’t matter to me...just, um, you know, use the stall shower after the game...cause, I don’t mind that you’re different but…”

This may appear to be me going wonky, but please, yes, have questions, have opinions but if you want to reassure me, question me, or others about intersex conditions, please, please put it in the comments. Why? Because so few people EVER talk about this that I don’t want a bunch of whispers in emails. When someone does a search because they just got some doctor’s report and have to wait 2-6 weeks for tests, I want them to find the questions, the things people might have already said to them in comments, and dealt with. I’m letting you know, if you email about it when I post like this, I WILL put your question/statements in the comments.

Why?

Because I wrote that three million women in the USA have just those 4 intersex conditions, I didn’t count the dozen plus other ones, and yet, I got a lot of assumption about one person: me. Yeah, because of those anomalies in my 46 (or 45, or 47) chromosomes, they are doing a genetic and chromosome work-up and a doctor seems SURE that I have condition X, another person thinks I have condition Q which is actually rare enough not to be listed in the intersex/DSD conditions (different conditions means different parts of chomosome code are missing, which means you can be prone to heart, lung or other conditions). But either way, if I have Huntington’s or other diseases found from hereditary (remember that doctor who was convinced I was inbred, my mother was not amused when I let her know my medical records sort of now indicate that her sex partner was granddad or another close relative is my ‘real’ genetic father) or other chromosomal issues, maybe it will help. For the most part, the diseases found cannot be treated, or some can, but not in Canada unless you are in Toronto. And since in this city people can’t get diagnosed for cancer because they won’t actually give them an X-ray, or follow up on blood work, I am not seeing stem cell treatment in my future oddly. But I am going to talk about it.

If you live in a city, if you know over 1000 people, including bank tellers, store clerks, managers, students, people in your high school then you already know, several people with Intersex/DSD conditions. That is what I said before and I say it again, no, not on the internet, face to face. If you feel you ‘know’ someone who has an intersex condition over the internet, I am telling you that you ‘know’ about 4-5 people minimum who have a DSD/intersex condition in your regular daily, monthly life: face to face. They just never told you. And maybe we should all ask ourselves why?

When people transition their sex to their gender identity as an adult, it is hard not to notice, not to hear about it. Because people talk, and look and have think because they saw it on a TV show they know the score. “Not a real woman”, we hear and see the intolerance of those around them. What do you think those whose earliest memories are of a gaggle of doctors examining, measuring, re-examening their genitalia while making comments to the student doctors who were watching are feeling?What do you think those men and women whose early memories are those of surgeries they were told to lie about to class mates, and were told, ‘Kept it secret’, are thinking?

Even the most basic intolences I have heard: sitting next to Linda, my spouse with a German mother, about how ‘Those Germans are heartless bastards to the last one.”, heard how “lesbians just need a good.. (arm pump)..ya know” or "all them short haired lesbians want to be men". I have been treated and all but told that being disabled and being on welfare was the same thing (and the same type of people..ya know). That drug users are a drain on society (I know a few transit workers who are steady heroin users), that people who take X should be locked up (I tell them I take drug X – “Oh, but you’re a different story”). I am pretty bold, but I didn't stop enough of that crap. I too ended up with a head full of baggage; actually I think I have an whole train of baggage cars! So imagine, in Cardiff, when an eight year old girl with leukemia finally had her hair grown back long enough to go to school and the first day her head is set on fire by her fellow schoolmates (true story), how much attention do you want to draw to yourself?

In the UK, there is anti-bullying day, and the Prime Minister wore a patch. Is there an anti-bullying day here? What kind of rape is it when classmates, children viscously open about their stereotypes, want a look and force you down to rip off clothes and check your groin? And when adults, who have the same stereotypes, just a little more restraint, just want to whisper about it, or treat a person different?

The responses regarding a few paragraphs of about intersex and that, yes, I am being tested for one, depressed me to the point that my health deteriorated because of what people thought, in a post about me having a fever. No one seem to care about the fever. But over a dozen emails, from people I had not even had an email before to let me know their ideas on a topic they knew next to nothing about. We keep the silence, and we enforce the silence.

Linda said not to write on it again, because of the pain it put me through. She did want to have to pick up the pieces, she doesn't want to see me hurt. She remembers the fragility.

I lost my will. But I'm back.
And maybe I will lose some readers, or be hurt or burned again, but I will talk about this, about FSD, about all the things women are supposed to enforce the silence about. And convince others to STOP the silence about it: Neither I nor the women who get clothes from the men’s section (or the men who get clothes from the women’s section - go androgyny, YUM! Okay, terrible clothes for an archer but he is looking good!) want to be a the opposite gender (at least that is the majority – male cross dressing is primarily a heterosexual ritual for reasons I am still trying to figure out – 10% of hetero men do it regularly, (two dudes, deal with it)
almost ALL have done it at least once for some reason - whether sober or otherwise). As for women and crossdressing: we steal everything that might make us look good – your shirt is our sleepshirt, your sweater…MINE NOW! We are crows, if it is shiny, it is mine, if it smells good, it is mine! Mens socks are thicker…mine! I used to buy my shoes in London at a store for gay guys, because it had FAR better selection in better colours (pink, powder blue, a velvet burgandy) for larger feet and wider feet. Hey guys: we saw your tights and high heels in the 18th century to make your ankles look svelte and we have been wearing them ever since, same with the eyeliner we stole in Egypt. And the corsets to keep a gentleman slim in 1895-1910 have become the underlining of today’s goth girl corsets.

Sorry, clothes…got distracted.

Okay, research done, articles being written, now time for kittens and cats. Oh geez, out of room kinda. Um, I hope more tomorrow if the fever isn’t back, but this here is Oreo, a black and white cute little cat that likes me, hates all other cats and isn’t too fond of Linda. Also my purple Skelanimal top which I like a lot because it helps show off my…um, kittens? Oh, the reason that Oreo isn’t fond of anyone else is a territory issue. You see, Oreo walked into my lap and made herself comfortable. She rode everywhere with me, the only problem is that every time I got her off, she would just figure a way to step back on as I wheeled past something. When she got on the first time I said, “Oh, do you want me to be your owner?”

As you can see by the look she is giving Linda, I got that relationship wrong, as she is saying, “This is MY property, back off!” But still a very good lap cat and 10 years old, though she looks much younger.

There were also two twins, the one in black is the dominant one, female and is bigger (and a bit of a bully). They need to be adopted together. Alex, the boy, was very, very cute and inquisitive, but we could only see him while throwing treats to the back of the area. Here Alex is very interested in the Camera.
Very, very interested.
Okay, that was your ‘AWWW!” moment. Back tomorrow with some lighter stuff I hope. With all the noise, earth shaking and heavy equipment so close it is hard to maintain my health and my state of mind.

For those of us who have hard to diagnose diseases, how often has the ego of the doctor been of more importance than our well being? How often has what they ‘feel’ been our commands? Now try to imagine living 15 years ago, pre-google (yes, I know, PRE-google?), and before genetic testing was available and imagine what it would be like to see those doctors 2 hours after the birth of your child. Imagine being a child and having five or more of those doctors telling you what to do, what to think, how to act, and how often to come and be touched by them, from earliest memory. Imagine pictures of you, your genitals being passed around at conferences, being taken against your will, at four, at six, at 12. Never get between a doctor and his ego, his paper, his publication, his test theory.

Without diversity, there would be no wonder in the universe.
I'll let you in on a secret: Women fart. Linda doesn’t of course, but OTHER women. Women can have PMS so bad, or mood swings from it so violent they scared me (how can a woman that small scream so much!?). And women can miss a period while hetero partner is away without it being a virgin birth. Oh yeah, and some of us women have little mustaches, and some of us have fuzz, and some of us have lots and lots of black hair all over, and big sideburns. And we are still loving and lovable.

I am fevered and do the R word. Plus Intersex: 3 million USA women gagged by society, by us.

I have been researching this blog post for hours, and now my fever is back (hence a slight delay).

But it is a really interesting post about the lie of ‘Normal.’ Diversity is ‘Normal’: did you know that over 3 MILLION women in US and Canada have one of the four of the most common intersex conditions. 1) Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome – an XY female who does not have a uterus and because they cannot absorb Androgen, they end up looking very, very beautiful. But neither Christianity, the ‘science’ of the west, or feminism, has created or defended a place for an XY female.
2) MRKH – a female grows up and does not have menstruation, because the Uterus is small, misshappen or absent. The male gynocologists are more obsessed however with the absence of a vagina (no vagina, no heterosexual sex, whether there is female pleasure or not, no ‘Normal’, so pressure to dilate or create a vagina is pushed on the teens/females in early 20’s who are confused and scared with ‘What is wrong with me’ – the solution, ‘You need heterosexual sex’). Not so great unless you like lots of pain and dialation. And it ignores bisexual lesbians and asexual women. Asexual women, those who desire no sex, are over 1% of the population, but are "oppressed by a consensus that they are nonexistent," and left behind by both the sexual revolution and feminist movement. (a true statement from an academic paper now 40 years old – what has been done in two generations to acknowledge and give rights and protection to them?)

3) congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), the adrenal gland makes extra androgen which results in facial hair, body development, hair loss and other androgen related conditions. In some ethnic communities this is more common than 1 in 300 births

4) Turners Syndrome: is a disorder caused by the loss of genetic material from one of the sex chromosomes (an X) – often women literally have just one chromosome, an X. So things like puberty may never happen without intervention. Talk about traumatic teenage years. Or the chromosome has so many errors that estrogen needs supplementation: menstruation and fertility are both almost always absent.

A couple million women and yet no one wants to talk about it. In the Olympics, 1 in 400 athletes failed the ‘chromosome’ sex test, and yet all were proven to be female. ALL. Which is why the IOC dropped it. The Athletics and other organizations did not. So, due to the ‘embarressment’, the ‘other’, the ‘they don’t look right’, the not willing to talk about it, over 2% of the women in North America will never be able to compete at the Olympics (coming next month).

Just one of these conditions is more common than Lupus, and yet we never talk about it, never hear about it, even though we know in our life, as we pass by people in the stores, the woman serving our latte, many, many women with intersex conditions. But the first thing the gynecologist tells them: “Keep this a secret”

Being human is something to be ashamed about.

That’s the teaser for tomorrow’s blog. Also, guess which intersex condition I am currently getting tested for! Get it right and win…..this NEW CAR! (I’m sorry, I was channelling Bob Barker and the Price is Right). No, um, how about, a nice postcard? My medical book on treating various military burns including flame-throwers and napalm?

Oh, the world is spinning again. I am feverish sick.

I have been feverish because my body is too weak that multiple systems are not able to function correctly. This has gone on for days. I finally decided that one hour every two days of non-fever was not actually ‘reserves’. So I am to bed, as I was all yesterday. Yes, you heard it. The mighty has FALLEN!: E.F.M. is at rest (the short term, not the ‘we put you in an incinerator’ kind). See, I do know the meaning of the word ‘rest’. I just happen to not learn quickly. But if I win the post and lose Beth by dying, that is overall a loss. So I rest.

At a tribute to my hallucinations, the rest of the blog will be illustrated as “Beth and Linda, the Yaoi version.”

First Linda had to come rescue me from where I was flushed and fevered.
(Is it wrong that I WANT to have that ass? I know it is a guy/uke but what a delectable ass, particularly if Linda found it so, I could transfer and wheel around naked all the time! Yum!)

So last night, I had a fever so high I was doing a ‘Taxi/Untouchables’ to my small cat plushie called ‘pounce.’ “You looking at ME!” I was shouting at 1:00 a.m. from my pillow, “You looking at ME! You land on me, you put one of us in the hospital, we put one of you in the morgue!” (I had a really great Scottish accent too). Linda turned Pounce’s head so she wasn’t looking down at me and was able to calm me down and get me to sleep.
Asleep until 4 a.m. when I woke up and started talking to my pillow and the ice pack under it. One ice pack I call “Mr. Four.”

“Bring back Mr. Four!” I asked Linda, “Mr. Four’s friend has a limp handshake, and lacks his firm resolve and fortitude!”

Poor Linda.

Today, I have been sustaining myself on Pocky, and now it is off to bed. Linda picked me up the dark pocky, the ‘Men’s Pocky’ – because in Japan (and here I guess) men are supposed to like bitter things and women are supposed to like sweet. I like Chocolate. Mmmmmm. However, for guy who start eating pocky (which is flavor on a stick, like chocolate and mixed almonds dipped – think a dipped cone but no ice cream to melt), beware a slight side effect: the ‘Pocky Experience.’ For those young faced or particularly smooth skinned men, whose pocky eating is interpreted as the ultimate ‘come hither’ seduction by the Seme’s out there, you may be losing your pocky….but gaining a new….um….friend. Just a warning.

Off to bed.

My full blog post including PCOS, FSD, RSD and more of the diversity of being female is tomorrow. That is a diversity not under the oppression of ‘Normal,’ Because who DOES fit those images or expectations thrown at you every hour by society regarding being perky but non-confrontational, having the right body shape, the ‘can do everything, work, have a perfect relationship and host a dinner for 14!’ expections until you feel like an ‘other’, and ‘outsider’ and if in any way genetically different, a ‘freak.’

I hate that word. To know that simply by being born with a condition of genetic diversity, your only option a few generations ago was a sideshow…..not a good headspace.