“You’re Really Good At Taking Everyone’s Sh!t”

Whose Fault Is It?

Emotional labor is the act of “regulating or managing emotional expressions with others as part of one’s professional work role”. For the context of this blog post, I will also be referencing emotional work as well, which is the role people use in any social context.
RANT: Every post, YouTube video, and link that I looked at typically focused on the emphasis of how women have been the brute focus of emotional work and often, labor. WHAT ABOUT THE MEN?!
BLOG: Ideally, men have been the focus, but in our current generation, I am starting to wonder if men are becoming the scapegoat for blame. There are good and bad things to this, but I can only share my experiences. From growing up in a household as an adopted child to working in hospitality at some of the best hotels in the Houston area, to coming home and being expected to “clean up everyone else’s shit” (one of my ex’s fathers literally told me this and suggested I work for some type of plumbing company) to experiencing my own version of emotional labor is…exhausting. As a recommendation, if you’re dealing with being the emotional laborer of your family or workplace, I suggest counseling, good friends, hobbies, and money.
Now that I have your attention, the emphasis on emotional labor during this period of the class was for women. Honestly, I love that. Often, the strongest women in my life have carried the emotional labor of EVERYONE in the family. My Grandmother (capital G, because she truly is a G), and my Aunt (who raised me, God bless her soul) have not only raised multiple members of the family but have guided others and influenced people for generations to come. I can endlessly explain what they have done for everyone, including my impaired brother (this falls into the disability category of the past few weeks, but I decided to not go in-depth with these issues and instead focus on emotional labor…anyway) My Grandmother has done amazing things as a widowed woman, and when my grandfather was alive, what I recall of him, he was a remarkable man, veteran, and overall generally good person. In order for him to be that he needed to have an even stronger woman there to not only support him, but to motivate and guide him. We so often focus on a certain gender, but I think its vital to focus and include everyone because we cannot physically do it all on our own – even if social media suggests that we do.
When it comes to emotional labor for myself, as an older male, I grew up with the family vibe of “you want it? Do it yourself” This mindset has its own version of toxic masculinity and it worked for a time, but as I have grown older and started practicing gratitude, meditation, and fitness, I have learned that kindness is the key to growing. However, that is also the curse of being easily manipulated and being the scapegoat out of a lack of emotion – if you allow yourself to be. When working as a hotel supervisor, I found myself taking on the emotional verbal abuse of people that travelled so far and attempted to check in, but one minor inconvenience (Well…one time there was a major inconvenience, we sold out and by the time they got there…the people didn’t have a room… and they were diamond members which is equivalent to being a traveling version of Karen) set them over the top, and I had to apologize profusely, make up for their issues by giving them a free nights stay at another hotel, etc… all while keeping a smile on my face. So dumb, but it was vital in learning how to maneuver around people when they are angry and teaching myself how to stay calm in the face of disappointment. That’s an invaluable trait and lessons/memories that I am grateful for.
I don’t know, I am a believer in the idea that everything happens for a reason. Maybe I should allow myself to be the gatekeeper of my own “shit”, to be more selfish and selfless at the same time, and to lack the attempt to understand everything and everyone around me but I cant do that shrug. In essence, I think all of us must have some type of role in emotional labor, but please, don’t forget to take care of your mental, physical, and financial well-being. Your family, friends, and pets will thank you for it. (I will always choose to be kind and thank you to all of the people in my life, wouldn’t be me without YOU).

The Resting Bitch Face

In a poem titled “Ode to My Bitch Face” Olivia Gatwood theorizes about some reasons why women have resting bitch face or R.B.F. She says that some are born with it, to some it is a defense mechanism they put up every day, and to some it is a “safe zone.” The resting bitch face according to Urban Dictionary is “a person, usually a girl, who naturally looks mean when her face is expressionless, without meaning to” and “A bitchy alternative to the usual blank look most people have. This is a condition affecting the facial muscles, suffered by millions of women worldwide. People suffering from bitchy resting face (BRF) have the tendency look hostile and/or judgmental at rest.”

Queer Brokenness: Intersection with Mental Illness

Image Source: http://trauma.blog.yorku.ca/2015/12/south-asian-queer-community-lacks-visibility/  (Artist – Jinesh Patel)

(Content and Trigger Warning: Self Harm, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Intimate Partner Violence, Bullying)

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I often find that mental illness and queerness aren’t addressed properly or constructively when talked about together. So often the public at large would have us believe that queerness is a result of mental illness or that mental illness is the result of queerness exclusively. With this in mind, the queer community will often push back on society’s behavior by talking about the two exclusively from each other, frequently ignoring all the ways mental illness intersect. That’s does not go to say that queerness is the result of mental illness or vice versa at all, but rather it shouldn’t be ignored that many people in the queer community go through both because of the way society has constructed and reacted towards queerness. For example, queerness has often been perceived as a deviant thing, it has historically been punished and worked against in a variety of ways.

Queer Identity Discovery: The Domino Effect and Queer Time

Image Source: http://www.avclub.com/article/theres-mash-rainbow-road-themes-all-8-mario-karts-206528

I’ll focus on my own experience here but I know there are going to be things about my experience that many other queer people can relate to in this regard.

My experience with queerness has never been linear, it has indeed been very queered. It has consistently involved not knowing about a way of being queer and then being introduced to the concept, a moment of reflection and then realizing “oh shit that’s me.” But I’ve also consistently struggled with coming to terms with these new labels and seeing how they fit me.

From the age of 12 to about a month away from turning 21 I had been on a journey of denial, internalization, grief over myself changing and growing, complete secrecy, exploration, etc. etc. about me being bi. I had come out after years of being afraid of myself, but in that time I also developed a yearning for community. When I came back to UMBC after two years of community college I knew that I’d want to seek out my community. Since then my reality as a queer person has shifted so greatly. I feel so liberated. Yet I grieve. I grieve for the ways I have been, not knowing if they are different than who I am now. My sense of self has been questioned. I don’t know if my new state of existing is just blurrier, or if things have just been just out of my sight this entire time and it constantly feels like both. I don’t know how consistent this person who is me is.

But I like this show mom!

As a 90’s baby I look back at the old cartoons and listen to old hits, reminiscing the good ole days. I joke around with the children at my job, telling them how the best shows were on cartoon network . I expressed that my favorite shows were the Power Puff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Dexter laboratory , and other hit TV series.

As I continued to share my stories, one kid goes “I like Loud House”. Of course I did not know what he was talking about , but another child replies ” It’s that Gay show! My father said I cannot watch it”. Then it clicked. I remember this being a controversial topic on Facebook before the shows premier. The show contains a married, biracial , Gay, male couple that has a child.

In this blog I will explain what makes this show inappropriate .

Point #1  It goes against the social norm : How dare you show a child who is the product of the american dream two men together! That’s absurd ! How dare we show children that there is more to life than just mommy and daddy. Boys cannot be feminine ! They must be rough. If my child see’s this he will not be the man I want him to be! (sarcasm)

Point #2 STICK WITH YOUR OWN RACE! :  How dare we promote outside our race ! ( Sarcasm)

Point #3 THIS GOES AGAINST OUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS ! :  who cares.

Point #4  How can you reproduce if your gay : Well if there’s a will there’s a way……. who cares

At the end of the day no one said you had to be gay, but just respect them as humans. The world must embrace change!  Whose to say your way of living is right!? If anything I see it as this, we are letting people finally be themselves. Many people have been killed, have been shunned, have killed themselves,or have had something tragic done to them because they were considered ” not normal” ( Much like blacks were considered way back when but I shall not go there 😀  ). Now we have same sex marriages, Tv shows, Gay parenting, etc! All of these things that were considered abnormal are now part of our norm and should be! At the end of the day we are people. Accept it!

 

 

 

 

 

PSA: Transgender ≠ Gay

In the way gender and sexuality operates in our world, often times they are highly construed and mistaken for each other. Are they related? Yes. But they are still separate things. Because these identities are often mistaken in this way many people have this idea that being transgender is an identity that’s ‘chosen’ to receive some kind of access to heterosexuality and that to be validated as a trans person you need to be engaged in this effort to be on some end of the gender binary only performing gender in ways that are widely accepted in a hyper policed way, this includes heterosexism as it relates to transess. In fact there’s  a whole other level of heterosexism that is applied to trans people.

But sexual diversity is just as diverse in the trans community as it is in the cis population. I can only speak deeply about my own experience, and I realize it is but a mere single experience in a sea of many others and I do not speak for other trans people, though I feel like my story is relevant to this topic. My personal experience with my gender identity and sexual identity, has been a long and arduous journey that starts out in the closet as being reluctantly bisexual, often leaning towards my attraction to women. Then I was introduced to concepts of there being more than two genders, and it struck me. There were months of tears, denial, and confusion. Once exposed to different genderqueer, nonbinary, and trans identities that I suddenly felt aligned with I couldn’t go back to a reality where my sexuality was the same in relation to my gender identity ever again. Ultimately this ended up being a positive thing, something freeing, something that just ended up feeling more comfortable. But my initial reaction was fear, uncertainty, and feeling disingenuous because of the way the world saw identities like mine and I reflected that back into the way I saw myself. I still do feel internal conflict, I still get scared that I, in no way, have all of the answers about my identity, but as I come into my gender identity I find that I’m making progress in establishing peace with my bisexuality. It’s as if I didn’t want to identify as bisexual before, something about seeing myself as a ciswoman before I knew about the trans identities that fit me,  dating a man really did not sit with me well, it just wasn’t me and it isn’t. I’m finding that being trans and accepting it has essentially worked me into actually being more comfortable about my bisexuality. Now I find new complications in grieving my previously thought of lesbian/queer woman identity, but again I can’t go back, it’s just not me. I am a transmasculine person who is bisexual and with that I am queer and transgender. I think it’s a timeline and identity that defies this heterosexist view of trans people, as different stories and sexual identities of many trans people do. I wanted to provide my own experience as an example of how transness does not equate to gayness. There are certainly many other narratives out there that proclaim trans does not equal gay as well and encourage people inside and outside the LGBT community to realize that there is no one way to be trans or queer and that there is no reason someone can’t be both.

Gender Policing of Halloween Bodies

For Halloween this year my girlfriend and I decided to go as Shaggy and Velma. While looking for clothes in a thrift store, my girlfriend started playing with the idea of going as a sexy Velma. Going along with it I suggested I go as a sexy Shaggy as well. 

Split Second

Change happens very slowly. You can feel it weighing down on you overtime.

It squeezes you until you can’t take deep breaths anymore. It’s a white entity that gets heavier and heavier until you feel suffocated and start seeing flashing lights. It’s a gloomy creature that rests on your neck and crushes your vocal chords, until your voice crackles and then disappears.

When you least expect it, your eyes lose their shimmer and are replaced by glass with no reflection.

Change happens slowly. But I saw someone change before me in a matter of seconds.

Everyone Else Wants a Dick in My Mouth (In which society takes one glance at my body and assume they know my whole life)

A few months ago when eating lunch with friends, one of my friends offhandedly commented that ‘men must love [me]’. I realized that she was referring to my ability to fit a large amount of food in my mouth, and assuming that I would use this ability to give great blowjobs (something I have no interest in doing). This got me thinking.

On the ‘trans race’ argument people use to try to invalidate transgender identities

Before  anything I’m going to start of by pointing out that I’m trans but I’m white. So my space in talking about this will come largely from the fact that I’ve had many people including my father try to invalidate transgender identities by saying “well if trans race identities aren’t a thing then I’m sorry transgender identities can’t be either.” So this is mostly coming from a place of defending my own identity but also calling out racism. But since I don’t actually experience racism or understand all of the complexities of this topic I invite this to be a discussion and something people can add to via comments.

So often I hear this argument that tries to invalidate transgender people, and a large response in retort to this attitude is “well you just can’t compare them because they’re different things.” I totally agree with this and it is in fact the reason. Unfortunately, for some, it’s not enough to understand. So in order to justify my identity and also keep people from muddling race and gender, I’ve thought about it a lot and decided to share my reasoning so far in explaining why we can’t simply equate the two.