CN: Discussion of masturbation and pornography. Probably NSFW. Links whose destinations you don’t recognize are definitely NSFW.
I wrote recently about how I recognize the importance of the media that made me the atheist I am today even as I acknowledge its glaring flaws, because it filled the particular void I had. I meant that discussion to be a lead-in for this one, but it took on a life of its own.
There are a lot of reasons to point out media that fail this or that marginalized group. The euphemism “problematic” acknowledges media that traffic in stereotypes, show gut-wrenching physical or emotional violence for shock value, discuss the mere existence of marginalized groups as though it were funny enough to be the punchline of jokes, or otherwise promote the deadly ideals of kyriarchy. It’s largely a matter of public record that it’s not really possible to totally eschew “problematic” media. Our ability to even recognize things as problematic is dependent on the axes of oppression of which we’re aware, so one person’s seemingly innocent pleasure is another’s dehumanization-for-entertainment. Additionally, many problematic tropes are so entirely because they are pervasive, dominating depictions of members of the groups in question, rather than because they are directly insulting or damaging, and so can only be redeemed by other depictions becoming common enough to offset their impact.
There’s something that gets lost in discussions of problematic media, however, and that’s how they can be a necessary stepping stone for people on their way to better things.
In observance of Mother Language Day and because its topic makes this appropriate, the rest of this post is in my native Spanish.
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He pensado mucho de mis raíces. Soy una criatura de combinación, hecha de muchas piezas, cosida difícilmente junta. Soy americana, boricua, cubana, y en unos meses, canadiense. Nací en una ciudad, de padres ciudadanos y campesinas, quienes llegaron a madurez en New Jersey después de niñeces en las islas del Mar Caribe, inmigrantes sin inglés.
Viví en New Jersey, rodeada de las culturas italiana-americana, boricua-americana, e irlandés-americana. Viví también en Miami, en el medio de la cultura cubana-americana y la mezcla de cosas raras y únicas que es el sur de la Florida. Vivo ahora en Canadá, en donde tengo que construir cosas familiares de partes salvadoreñas, jamaicanas, y polacas.
No sé si jamás veré los lugares de mi pasado.
Años van a pasar antes que podrá volar a New Jersey para ver la calle donde viví. Mis padres me dijeron que la casa ya no parece como acuerdo, que las rosas ya no crecen en el patio y la mata de acebo hace años se murió. Quizás es mejor que no lo veo. Hay carboneros por acá, y casi nadie que quiero ver por allá.
Mi familia no quiere bregar con la idea que yo soy la persona que soy. Cada vez en cuando me llaman, pero no ha sido similar que antes. Ahora se oye la tristeza o el coraje en sus voces cada vez que oyen la mía, como que están hablando con una fantasma de una memoria. Lo que oigo es literalmente nostalgia: dolor en sentir que algo se perdió y no se consigue más. Ya no me piden a llamarlos. Mi familia en Miami es, por su cuenta, mucho más pequeña ahora, consistiendo de la minoría de mis relaciones que no me han repudiado y amigos que han quedado cerca. Si vuelo a Miami otra vez, tendré que solicitar amigos para albergarme, porque jamás podré sentirme seguro en la casa de mis padres. Hay recuerdos queridos por allá, y cultura familiar, y comida que me hace llorar. Quiero regresar, eventualmente.
Nunca he visto a Cuba ni a Puerto Rico personalmente. Quizás algún día tendremos dinero suficiente para visitar a las islas que me dieron las culturas de mis padres, para que yo pueda ver así cerca de donde vengo.
Nunca he tenido una relación especialmente cariñosa a mis raíces culturales. La cultura hispánica todavía da apoyo a sentimientos homofóbicas, anti-transgéneras, anti-ateas, y de varias otras formas opuestas a lo que yo vivo. El machismo hispano es famoso, severo, asqueroso, y vergonzoso, y no quiero ningún parte en preservarlo para las generaciones futuras. Las generaciones futuras merecen mejor que eso. Hay mucho para criticar en nuestra historia, especialmente ahora que el poder de la Iglesia Católica sobre las sociedades hispánicas se está debilitando. Fue posible, con mi distancia y mi expulsión de la compañía hispanohablante, que yo rechazara el resto. Fue posible, con esa ruptura, que rechazara mi raza también.
Ni quería ni pude. Aunque podría ser blanca en un contexto específicamente latinoamericano, no soy blanca por acá. Traigo detrás de mi cienes y cienes de años de revolución y resistencia, yuca y maíz, sol y arena. Detrás de me tengo los atentos finales de Hatuey y Agüeybaná de conseguir un archipiélago Taino fuera de control español. Detrás también tengo los esclavos africanos quienes nos dieron las delicias de nuestra cocina: sancocho, tostones, mofongo. En ser rechazada de la cocina de mis padres y prevenida a quedarme conectada a mis raíces de esa manera, tuve desaire recargada a conocer de dónde vine.
My social circle has been remarkably supportive of the traumas and challenges I’ve faced over the past year. A few of its members, however, haven’t yet grasped the nature of the rift that has emerged between me and my parents. They keep telling me to watch how viscerally I criticize them and to intersperse my rage with acknowledgement that the people who raised me are doing “the best they can” to wrap their heads around my situation. At their worst, they tell me not to “air the family’s dirty laundry,” failing to grasp that one of the foremost weapons against their particular secrecy-based abuse dynamic is the cleansing light of day.
Every time I hear those phrases, my mind flits back to the worst nightmare I ever had, in June 2015. This was around when my parents first started losing their minds over seeing my long hair and painted nails over webcam, and sent the first of an onslaught of Emails that stabbed directly at what I was going through. I was terrified that, in their bigotry, they would do something extreme. They threatened to cut off my financial support if I breathed too loudly in their direction; what “punishment” would they impose for joining what my culture regards as its most outré abomination? What would I face if I ever again put myself at their mercy by sleeping under their roof, as I did for two weeks every year?
Those are the fears they tell me to put aside when they plead for reconciliation.
Those are the fears I dreamed about that night.
Those are the fears I wept about that morning.
Content note for oneiric horror, kidnapping, and emotional trauma.
I find it strange and a little funny when people comment on my fashion sense. I have no doubt that it’s genuinely praiseworthy, but some of the compliments I’ve received come with a little extra subtext I’d like to put to rest.
This fashion sense is the work of years, not months.
I’ve been paying vastly outsized attention to women’s clothing for my entire life. I’ve been able to render informed opinions on clothing styles and makeup hues since high school, if not earlier. I had weirdly specific ideas about what I wanted the women in my life to wear. I fantasized about and utterly failed to seduce partners who approximated that style in my misguided quest to surround myself with the precise sort of femininity that it turned out I actually wanted, not to be around, but to be. I did not face my more authentic clothing with the anxious confusion of an empty cistern. I turned that spigot and enough fashion came out to dress ten svelte Hispanic ladies. I was not intimidated by no longer being able to dejectedly match any T-shirt with one or another set of jeans and call it a day; I was liberated.
And because I came into this battle well-armed and, after an outpouring of support, well-provisioned, I’m sharing here what wisdom I have about how I look good in women’s clothing.
“My self-summary: Wm 42 6’1 200 6.5 very oral, always horny love to have fun
I’m really good at: Performing oral
The six things I could never do without: “Sex blow jobs eating pussy.”
I AM A SUPPURATING LAMPREY WEARING THE FLESH OF MAN AND I DESIRE YOUR GENITALS FOR MY FACE HOLE.
Last weekend, I finally managed to bring my D&D campaign to a close. I started conceptualizing the story that became this campaign close to ten years ago, in a different city, with different ambitions. It was part of my first serious attempt to be a Dungeon Master, after two previous games that devolved into high-powered absurdity. It evolved hand-in-hand with the expansion of my campaign setting, a homemade version of the detailed worlds published for reference and inspiration. The end of this long-running game gives me a lot to think about, including what to do with all this extra free time. Somehow, I think I’ll find something.
“I am deadly with crutches. Them fuckers are lethal in my hands. I like, and want, you. Will you text me? –X.”
HELLO LADYFACE. IT IS IMPORTANT TO ME THAT YOU KNOW THAT I AM A MURDEROUS DYNAMO OF SEXUAL LETHALITY. MY THUNDERSEXINGS ARE ILLEGAL IN MANY COUNTRIES DUE TO STATUTES BANNING THE USE OF WELDING TOOLS TO REPAIR INJURIES. I AM ABLE TO RENDER OBJECTS LETHAL BY CONVEYING MY DESIRES AT THEM THROUGH MICROWAVE BEAMS. ALSO, I AM ABLE TO RENDER ORGANISMS COOKED AND SOMETIMES EXPLODED BY CONVEYING MY DESIRES AT THEM THROUGH MICROWAVE BEAMS. THE INTENSITY OF MY SEXMURDER CAN BE MEASURED ON THE RICHTER SCALE AND ON THE REALLY LONG RULERS THAT ASTRONOMERS USE TO MEASURE SPACE.
I’m currently a candidate for permanent residency in Canada. It’ll be a while before the Canadian authorities make their decision, and then a bit longer while I come up with ~$500 that Canada likes to extract from its immigrants for the privilege of the legal right to remain even after their stay is approved, on top of a similar expense required to even apply. I’ll have to sit for some sort of interview in between, most likely, so that an official fundamentally unqualified to make this determination can decide if my relationship to Ania is genuine. I haven’t yet determined whether I’ll have to make that appearance while crossdressing, given that my legal paperwork is all under the old name, but signs point in that direction. I’m still figuring out whether it’s a good idea to start moving on my legal name change now, or if that would complicate my application. Immigrating while transgender is a dreadful experience overall.
Eventually, I’ll also have to renounce my US citizenship, because even having US citizenship is a liability for US citizens relocated long-term elsewhere. The United States is unusual in two respects: it is illegal to enter the United States with a non-US passport if one is a US citizen, and the US extends its financial fingers into the doings of US citizens living abroad. Much has been written about the annoyance that these rules impose on people even approaching middle-class, despite being ostensibly aimed at drawing back some money filched by jet-setting CEOs and parked elsewhere in the world. Worse, because US citizenship is transmitted by birth to at least one American parent or on American soil, if I have children, anything in their names is also subject to US scrutiny and US taxes, when they’ll have no personal connection to “the old country” at all. Relative poverty has kept me off of the IRS and Treasury Department’s radar, but I’ll still probably have to answer for my invisibility once my income becomes real.
There’s a tradition scattered around Latin America, inherited from 19th-century Spain, about grapes on New Year’s Eve. One eats las doce uvas de la suerte as the old year turns into the new one, assigning each grape a resolution, hope, or desire. As with many traditions, it was invented for cynical, consumerist reasons, in this case by vintners in Alicante to sell their excess grapes. It grew into its significance, becoming a magical ritual to ward off ill fortune and mischievous spirits and then into a tradition maintained for tradition’s sake.
My family has consumed las doce uvas de la suerte every year that I can remember, in between glasses of champagne and the din of festive noisemakers and fireworks. The fireworks and little trumpets and such were well in excess of what my sensory sensitivities deemed tolerable, without fail, but I liked the grapes.
Alex and Ania Splain You a Thing 
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